Pizza Quest

Homemade Pizza

2011-12-17T12:53:00.000Z

Pizza #1 Slightly deformed, potentially incestuous. Still tasty.

I've been doing this blog for nearly two years now and in that time I've eaten a lot of pizza; and as we all know, with great eating comes great learning. A bit like how Vikings would drink the blood of their enemies in the hope they would absorb their fighting knowledge, like a more gruesome Highlander, I feel I've digested enough pizza to now know what I'm talking about. What I'm trying and failing and getting distracted by Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery to say is that I think I've now eaten enough pizza made by other people to have a go at making it myself. If my Father were alive and literate, I'm sure he'd be hugely disappointed that this will be the greatest achievement of my twenty-five years.

Pizza #2 Getting better, maybe the result of a coupling of greater distance. If the last one was brother-sister, this is maybe cousin-cousin? Maybe even second cousins, or is that me being big headed?

Whenever I'm feeling unsure what the right thing to do is, or lost like a lamb with no shepherd, there's one book I turn to for advice, spiritual support and hope for Mankind's salvation. I think we all know what I'm talking about, Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals. Seriously, the recipes in this totally make up for Jamie's multitude of sins. Which I've handily listed right here:

He dresses like a rich, fat, fourteen-year-old on non-school uniform day (i.e. he's making an effort, but it's still gone horribly, horribly wrong).
He calls everyone 'brother'. He is way too white to do this.
His haircut is so, so awful, to the point that it almost excuses those dreadful trucker hats he keeps wearing.
When he's tasting something he does that thing where he rotates his finger because he's concentrating on the flavours so much. This annoys me because I've started doing that when I cook, and I hate to think I'm that easily influenced.
His wife is too beautiful.
He cried a lot on his American show and made us, as a nation, look weak and badly dressed.
He opened a shop near my Dad (who's not really dead or illiterate FYI) where people learn to cook a meal then buy all the ingredients for it. This feels too smug and makes me want to riot a little.

But, like I said, all those perhaps over zealous criticisms are forgiven because this book is so handy. Particularly it's recipe for Cheat's Pizza. I guess it's called 'cheat's' because you cook the pizza in a frying pan not in a wood-fired oven. This annoyed me because I only found that out after I'd bought and installed a massive wood fired oven in my tiny kitchen. It's huge, it blocks the kitchen door and I think my flatmate Jack is stuck in there because I haven't seen him for a few weeks and there's a weird(er) smell coming from the other side.

Pizza #3 This guy's parents met online, they're both really good looking and from entirely different countries. Actually one of them was black. Yep, that's right, this pizza was so good, it was mixed race.

Basically you fry the pizza for 10 or so minutes then stick it under the grill for 5 minutes. It tastes pretty good and is really quick to make. As you can see from the photos my pizzas, like my belly, are getting steadily rounder. I've tried to give these pizzas a fair and unbiased score, it wasn't easy, but I think you'll agree this is what they deserve:

10 out of 10

!!! Faux-Posh Pizza Double Review !!! Maximum WOW !!!

2011-11-17T19:42:00.002Z

So it looks like fancy pizzas are the new 'in-thing' in the mass pizza delivery world. How exciting. Call your children to tell them. If you don't have children that's fine, just record a video of you telling them to show your future baby the moment it pops out of your/your wife's/your girlfriend's/some girl's vagina.

At least this is the information I'm gleaming from Domino's and Pizza Hut's recent foray into 'not-obviously-crap' pizzas. I like the idea of companies watching the rise and fall of pizza trends. I'd like to think there are such things as pizza trends. It's nice to imagine they have charts and graphs measuring the popularity of various toppings all pinned up in their boardroom, so they know what kind of pizza is most likely to be the biggest thing on the pizza scene since someone decided to stuff a crust. There must be countless meetings where a bunch of pizza bigwigs discuss what new, so-hot-right-now, pizza is going to be the pizza equivalent of the music industry's seemingly relentless attempt to cash-in on the pedo-pound. They're searching for their very own Justin Pizzber. That's not a great pun, but I needed to lighten the mood quickly because mentioning pedophiles is rarely good for morale.

ANYWAY. Here's a couple of pizzas that, despite the fact they were obviously thought up in a horrible, corporate factory somewhere and are made of shit, are trying to convince me they're Fancy-Pants McCheese. Like they think I'm stupid. I'm going to prove I'm not stupid by writing about them. Could a stupid person write an irritating, pointless review to be read by perhaps a dozen people? I think not.

Domino's Gourmet Range: Rustica

So this is Domino's attempt at class and it's a bit like the pizza equivalent of MTV's G's to Gents. Did you ever watch that? It was like a hip-hop version of Tool Academy. You didn't watch that either? Good for you. Basically they just took a bunch of loser dickheads who all thought they were major players in the game and told them to start wearing ties. Not that that's bad advice, it's just that some people look so uncomfortable in a tie you wish they'd take it off because it's making your neck itch.

That's pretty much what's going on here. Domino's are dressing one of their regular pizzas up in a fancy suit and telling me he's a changed man. As if just because they're using 'SunBlush' baby tomatoes, the maxi-stodge base isn't going to turn my belly into the digestive equivalent of a motorway pile-up. As if having something as unconventional as spinach on there is going have me reassessing my belief that all Domino's ingredients are actually made from the same Play-Doh-like substance and all the guy at the shop has to do is paint the different toppings the right colour. No way buddy. Not happening dog. I'm like the girlfriend of a recently released convict who got banged up for domestic battery. "You ain't never getting in this house no more! No way, no how!"

Pizza Hut: Primo Italiano

'Primo Italiano'? Seriously? That's the best name you could come up with? It sounds like when you're on holiday and your Dad talks in an accent because he thinks that will help locals understand him. If that has ever happened to you, then don't worry, I don't know that because I was hiding behind a lamp post, watching, while your Father argued with an Italian traffic warden outside the airport. I'm not stalking you, or following you and your family and that dipshit boyfriend of yours around while you're all on holiday. That would be weird. Anyway, plane tickets to Tuscany are too expensive at this time of year and I know you might think you saw me when you were at that market trying on that bracelet but try and remember I have a very generic face. It could have been anyone. Anyone except me.

Anyway, this pizza can do one. It's like those guys that go to bars alone in tacky suits and sit there sipping a lime and soda and barging their way into girls' conversations. They reek of cheap perfume and I imagine they get home at 2am and try and call their mother and when she doesn't pick up they have a crank and stay up all night entering those TV roulette shows. I feel sorry for those guys. I don't feel sorry for this pizza though because it's just a pizza and therefore has no feelings, only cheese.

Verdict:

When you polish a turd all you end up with is a polished turd. Which admittedly is better than a normal turd, (it's all nice and polished for God's sake!) but it is still a turd and you wouldn't want to put it in your mouth. Which is exactly what I did with these two pizzas. But then I am by no means a good example of someone who makes sensible decisions concerning what to put, and not put, in their mouth (not much homo).

Princi: White Cheese and Smoked Ham

2011-10-09T16:26:00.000+01:00

Princi is a bakery on Wardour Street. I like it because it's simultaneously classy and cheap. Sort of like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. What gives Princi the edge over Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman is that, as far as I know, Richard Gere was not involved at any point, and had nothing to do with the production of my pizza. That was a good call, managers of Princi. Before they opened they probably had a meeting debating whether or not to have a Richard Gere themed restaurant, mercifully they decided against it. They didn't even opt for a subtle compromise, like a loaf of bread shaped like RG's big, smug, face. They took a staunch 'No Gere Here!' policy, and it paid off. As far as an extra point being added to their score on a lame, little pizza blog that is read by precisely no one of significance* can be considered 'paying off'.

I got this pizza on a Tuesday night, and even though it was only a Tuesday, Princi was totally full and there was nowhere to sit. So my companion and I decided to find a nice park bench and have a late night, urban picnic. I'd never noticed this before, but the West End of London is severely lacking in the park bench department. We literally walked around for about forty-five minutes, and literally did not see a single bench. Literally, literally. In fairness this was only a minor inconvenience. Grumpy, middle-class white boy had to sit on the curb to eat his fancy pizza, boo fucking hoo, but it did make think how tough it must be being a homeless bum in that part of London. Sure there are probably shelters for them to sleep in, but I imagine those places have a bit of condescending view on all the crack and smack that I, as a homeless bum, would be looking to score.

*If you are reading this and consider yourself significant, please give your reasons as to why and, if I find them convincing enough, I'll happily send you an apology, hand-written in blood (not my own).

7 out of 10

Ecco: Margherita

2011-09-17T15:14:00.000+01:00

On Drury Lane there's a little cafe with a sign outside offering 11" pizzas for £3.50. Normally I'd see that and do a little scoff because, for £3.50, you usually end up with a lump of bread that's been soaked in floor cleaner and liquid heart disease. However I was right to stifle my scoff. Partly because I was by myself, and what kind of jerk stands outside a quiet cafe in the middle of the afternoon making audible scoffing noises? That would both look weird and be weird. People walking past would think "Why is that guy staring at that sign making those odd throat noises? He must be a weirdo" and they'd be right. That's one reason it was a scoff-free experience, the other is that Ecco make a bloody nice little pizza. Really gooey.

I like gooey, sloppy pizzas. I like when holding it all together actually takes serious concentration and if you're not careful your fingers take a long, sticky trip down Hot-Tomato-Cheese Road. That's quite an unlikely name for a road and probably doesn't exist, but if it does and anyone lives there, let me know so I can come and live with you.

I don't think you should be able to hold a pizza upside down above your head without getting a messy head massage from uncle gravity. This is perhaps not a test that should be carried out in real life because the only possible outcomes are either that you have a pizza made partially of glue or you get a unusually tasty new hat. Definite lose-lose. Yummy pizza guys, nice work!

8 out of 10

Tesco: Spicy Meatball Calzone

2011-08-05T17:46:00.001+01:00

This seemed a bit posh for Tesco, but then in my eyes not living in a car with your wife-sister-daughter-mum is a bit posh for Tesco so maybe I'm a little bias. I hate shopping at Tesco. I'm not some anti-capitalist, burn 'em down revolutionary. I'm more than happy paying for Mr and Mrs Sainsbury's eighth summer holiday of the year, and I'm pretty sure I'm putting the Morrison's kids through higher education, but Tesco just feels evil. I think it's the font. I also don't like the slew of faceless celebrity voices that keep telling me 'every little helps.' Whichever way you look at it, that's a horrible slogan. Either it's really patronising, and suggesting that the huge, unbearable awfulness that is my life is, albeit briefly, relieved by the infinite benevolence of Tecso's 2 for £4 offer on Innocent Smoothies, or, and perhaps more sinisterly, it's implying that 'every little' purchase is inching Tesco closer and closer to some nefarious goal. Like there's the equivalent of Blue Peter's Totaliser in their head office, except evil, filled with blood and covered in skulls. Actually, I think I was right the first time, it is the font. Also, is there a more boring colour scheme than red, white and blue? I'd be more into a subtle range of greys and beiges. Patriotism, shmatriotism.

This was actually not bad, and I think it only cost about £3. That's pretty good for what is essentially a fancy, unorthodox pizza. What's fun about calzones is the way that, because all the toppings are compressed together, they burst in little pockets of tomato and cheese when you bite into them. Mmmm. That was definitely the sexiest sentence ever written in the history of this blog.

7 out of 10

Pizza Hut: Sizzling Sweet Chilli

2011-08-02T21:30:00.000+01:00

Sshhh. This review is being whispered to you because I ate this while watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in a friend's living room. It was quite a small living room, there were about seven people there and as I was the only one who'd ordered food I felt bad because I was making a lot of noise while people, about 50% of whom I knew, pretended the volume of the TV was enough to drown out me wafting the cardboard pizza box around and chewing like a lawnmower. It wasn't. If they'd been a gullible bunch they might have thought Voldemort had cast a 'Super-Irritatus-Soundius-Everywherio' spell on Harry and the gang. However they didn't think that because I make a point of not hanging out with morons. Although we were a bunch of twenty-somethings getting emotionally involved in a Harry Potter movie, so maybe I do. Buckbeak... :,(

I've had bad experiences with spicy pizzas in the past. Sadly not exciting 'bad experiences', like attempted murder or heartbreak, only pedestrian ones like them being too spicy. Thankfully this pizza was spicy enough to warrant a "Woah, this guy's zingy", without becoming a "I can feel my brain sweating out of my nose, I'm going to stop eating so I don't die." This is a delicate balance to get right. I should point out those would have been internal thoughts and not said out loud, especially to group of already annoyed half-strangers, and especially not half way through arguably the best Harry Potter film of them all, and especially not when I was so hungry doing anything with my mouth other than eating seemed inconceivable. Especially, especially.

Sometimes I get like that, where I have food and I'm so hungry that literally all I can think about is eating. Things like breathing, manners and snogging hotties take a few steps down the priority ladder. The amount of times I've had to pass up smooching some next-level babe because I had pizza to eat is higher than you'd think, (assuming you'd guessed a negative number).

7 out of 10

La Formachetta: Casareccia

2011-07-05T21:06:00.001+01:00

I've put 'Casareccia' in the title of this post because that was the pizza I ordered. The pizza I ate and the pizza in the photo is not a 'Casareccia' it's a 'Ortolana'. Which, if you ask me, (which you didn't, I'm just pre-empting your curiosity, you're welcome), sound more like Lamborghinis than pizzas. But then that could be down to the Italian-ness of the names. And when you're as pig-headed as I am, buying supermarket own brand tampons* would sound like describing how a girl's cheeks glisten like rose petals in the fresh morning dew,** just so long as you said it in Italian.

* F.Y.I. "Ciao, vorrei acquistare questi tamponi super economic per favore?"
**"Mi piace il tuo boobies"

I'm getting a bit distracted from explaining why the pizza listed wasn't the pizza eaten. The explanation's pretty simple. Dumb waiters. I'm not talking about the little lifts used to transport food, although they had those as well. They had both types of dumb waiters, the useful kind and the useless kind. If they also had a waiter that was literally unable to speak then that would be great because then they would have the full spectrum of 'dumb waiters'. It could be like a dumb waiter museum. That would be a good day out, perhaps a potential date spot. Preferably take someone you don't want to go out with anymore but are too scared to dump.

Anyway the idiot shmuck with the notepad brought me the wrong pizza, I told him it was the wrong pizza, he told me it wasn't, I told him I'd ordered one with sausage and this had aubergine and aubergines aren't sausages, he didn't believe me and then I noticed I had about 15 minutes to eat it anyway as I had places to be. So I put down the gun and let the hostages go. It's cool, we still keep in touch.

0 out of 10. WRONG PIZZA DICKHEAD.

The Haggerston: Margherita

2011-06-10T16:09:00.003+01:00

If you've never been, the Haggerston is a pub in Dalston. In fact, even if you have been it's still a pub in Dalston. It's location is in no way dependant on your attendance. That must come as a relief, to know that you are in no way responsible for the livelihood and well being of one of my many local drinking establishments. Or perhaps not, maybe its highlighted the true magnitude of your insignificance, to know that you, a self-aware, semi-capable human being are powerless to have any real effect on a pile of bricks. Maybe you could burn it down? Molotov cocktails through the windows? All that alcohol must be a fire hazard, and think of what it would do for your sense of self-worth. I expect you'd finally feel ready to audition for X-Factor or something. Don't though, (burn down the Haggerston or audition for X-Factor), I have a couple of chums that work there and I'd hate to think of them jobless/dying in fiery agony.

It would also be a shame because the pizza's are pretty good. They're kind of sloppy in a good way and the margherita's only £5.50 or something. And there's chilli oil if you're so inclined. They do a bunch of wacky toppings like pear or artichokes. I don't like artichokes, they're wankers. More like artiNOPES! Geddit?!?! If you didn't understand, let me deconstruct that shit little joke for you like it was a brand new set of reverse-Lego. Consider this a little peek behind the curtain to see how the magic happens:

Phase 1: Realisation I don't enjoy artichokes. I find them tough to chew and rude. They are rude vegetables. If they had the facilities to ignore more me I'm pretty sure they would. - I decide to illustrate this fact in pun form.

Phase 2: Gestation Having realised and accepted my negative feelings towards the vegetables I look at ways to subtly work this into word play of some kind. Fartichokes? Too childish. Although, obviously, bloody funny. Something less toilet orientated....Aha!

Phase 3: Actualisation Thus artiNOPES is born. Like a human birth there is a lot of blood, screaming and women in pain.

Now you know the extreme lengths that I go to for all these crap jokes. Gratitude please. Or money. In fact forget gratitude. Gratitude can't earn me Nectar points.

The other thing I like about the Haggerston is that there's a little room before the toilets where both the girls and the boys queue up. It's separated by communal sinks and I always think must be a great place to chat to ladies. Classic lines like "Washing your hands are you? Why? Did you accidently piss on them?" or, directed towards some hottie mid-queue, "Hey, so what are you here for? Poo or a wee?" have, as of writing, gained me precisely zero girlfriends. I'll let you know if that changes.

8 out of 10

Trattoria Da Luigi: Spicy Sausage

2011-06-05T21:08:00.003+01:00

Story time! Actually wait, that's misleading. Calling this a story implies there's some kind of drama or suspense involved, or it has even the tiniest amount of narrative drive. I wouldn't want to lead anyone on by suggesting something like that. I'll be more specific and try again:

Dull story time! A few days ago my friends asked me if I wanted to meet them for a lunchtime pizza. I'm not going to tell you what I said because you should really be able to make a fairly educated guess by now, in the same way you should have caught on to the predictability of the 'sticking hands in flames = burns', and 'large Nazi memorabilia collection = a lot less custody' patterns of cause and effect. They told me to meet them at "The Il Baccio pizzeria on Stoke Newington Church Street". However, and I'm ashamed I haven't noticed this before, there are four different pizza places with 'Il Baccio' signs on that road. It is possible that there are more than four pizza places vying for the title of Church Street's premier Il Baccio, but I had to wander around three of them looking like I'd been victim of a particularly unimaginative prank before I found my chums.

See what I mean about dull stories? How uninteresting was that? The concise version of that 'story' would be: It took me longer than expected to find the restaurant. Snawn* or what? I feel sorry for my Grandchildren, they're going to hate hanging out with me. I'll be the senile, grey-haired equivalent of Nytol. I probably don't need to worry about Grandkids just yet. I hear to get to that point you need to cross the 'kids' barrier first, and to get to 'kids' you need to cross the 'fertile, vaguely consenting woman' barrier. Neither of which looks like it will be happening any time soon. Anyway this pizza was actually really tasty, and totally worth the wandering.

*To snore and yawn simultaneously.

9 out of 10

Homa: Calzone

2011-05-28T16:00:00.000+01:00

If I was a travel card I’d want to make sure I was valid in zones 1 – 'Cal'. ßWhat a shit opening joke. I was going to make a funny about the Kenny Loggins song, you know the one from Top Gun and substitute “Highway to the dangerzone” to “Highway to the calzone” but it didn’t have enough syllables and doesn't really work phonetically due to pronunciation issues. When it comes to shoddy puns about 80’s power pop let it never be said I’m not a stickler. I don’t imagine anyone has ever actually said the words “that Joe guy can't stickle for shit”, which I guess means people are abiding by my wishes. Thanks guys, let’s keep a lid on this ‘non-stickler’ nonsense. I don’t want to get some kind of reputation.

I like to think of calzones as the Italian Cornish pasty, in the sense that they are like a pastry parcel filled with lunch. It’s quite telling as to how much classier Italy is than Cornwall based on what constitutes ‘lunch’. In Cornwall you open up your pasty and you get a lump of ground up meat and carrots, in Italy you get tomato sauce, cheese, ham, mushrooms, a bit of basil, maybe some olive oil. This comparison is basically a less funny and more specific version of Homer’s (the Greek poet) “White people have names like Lenny and black people have names like Carl” joke, except it would be “Italian people have things in their pasties like mozzarella and Cornish people have things in their pasties like mincemeat.”

Speaking of the famous yellow fat dudes, (not Jackie Chan you racist pig, he's not fat) these guys are pretty big fans of Homer, so much so they named the restaurant after him. However they obviously went over budget and could only afford an ‘A’ and not an ‘ER’ for the sign. I like this because it gives everything a bit of an urban edge. It’s basically a hip-hop/Simpsons themed restaurant. I went there once before, for brunch, but I just had a fry up, not pizza. If you’re the kind of person that has pizza for brunch then you’re sick and probably know where Maddie is.

8 out of 10

Perfect Pizza: Sheer Perfection

2011-04-03T18:07:00.001+01:00

I'd seen a few Perfect Pizza shops around town and had written them off as existing about one rung below Domino's on the ladder of 'gross pizzas'. That's a pretty bad rung to be on, in fact I'm not even sure it's still part of the ladder. It may just be lying on the ground at the foot of the ladder, probably in a puddle of muddy water. Despite my reservations I decided to give it a shot on the glowing recommendation of my flatmate. New rule: Never listen to my flatmate.

For £22 we got two large pizzas, chicken wings, potato wedges, garlic bread and some dips. In fairness that's a pretty good deal, here's a list of those things ranked in order of how much I liked them:
1) Chicken wings.
2) Potato wedges.
3) Garlic bread.
4) The dips.
5) The pizza.

Like my old Gramps has never said, nor will ever say because he's not from the old West, "When dips trump pizza, shit ain't right".

In the photo, if you look closely, you can kind of see the cheese is shining a little bit. I don't want shiny cheese. Shiny cars, shiny shoes, shiny shins, fine, shiny cheese, not so much. Also, and maybe I was unlucky and this was just a one off, but I think the guy that made my pizza ran out of tomato sauce and the only thing he had to replace it with was salt. Loads of salt. Luckily for me I'm not a slug because this pizza would have shrivelled the shit out of me. Not that having to spend the rest of my life unable to eat this pizza because it would now be fatal to me would be the worst thing about waking up to find I'd become a slug. There'd be loads of other drawbacks, like not having legs, or eyes or arms or no slime. I think perhaps I (and possibly all of us) take not being slimy for granted, we shouldn't, we're so lucky to be able to live slime-free lives. Think about that. Jah bless.

3 out of 10

Indo: Forestiere

2011-03-26T18:14:00.000Z

Indo is either a pub or a bar in Whitechapel. I'm not sure which because it looked like a pub in the sense that there were old wooden tables everywhere, it was dimly lit and a man brought his dog in but it may have been a bar because have you ever heard of a pub with a name like Indo? I was there because it was a friend's birthday and it serves pizza, both valid reasons to leave the house.

They have a classic, old-fashioned wood fired oven that churns out crispy pizzas every fifteen minutes or so. Slightly irritating however is that this oven is apparently only big enough for one pizza at a time, so considering there were about a dozen of us, pizzas came out at a slow enough pace to leave each person taking turns being the solitary pizza eater, while everyone else had to sit around watching them chew. It's almost as if Indo never considered the possibility that more than one person could come in and actually want to eat pizza at the same time. Maybe, prior to my friend's birthday, their clientele consisted solely of sad, hungry loners. Not such an unreasonable theory, Whitechapel does kind of bum me out. I can imagine if I had to spend a lot of time there my sadness, loneliness and hunger levels would increase at a similar pace. I think it's because the pavement's so wide it feels a bit like you're adrift in some dismal, concrete desert, that and all the sirens. So a desolate, urban wasteland exclusively populated by crime and accidents. Cheery stuff.

The Forestiere was a simple enough affair, ham, mushrooms, onions and an egg. Good old eggs. I'm getting into eggs on pizzas. Do you think chickens realise how lucky they are that people value their menstruations? This is a little gross but, girls, would it ease the cramping and moods or whatever if someone were to write you a charming letter once a month whole-heartedly thanking you for your used tampons? Would that make all the bleeding a little more bearable? Bear in mind I'm not offering to write these letters, I'm speaking in hypotheticals, don't send me any creepy, damp parcels. They definitely won't get opened.

7 out of 10

Chicken Nugget Pizza

2011-03-08T20:56:00.003Z

I've begun the last few posts apologising for my lack of activity and blaming laziness. I'm not going to do that this time because it's been over a month and apologising for being that negligent would be like apologising to a grieving mother after you'd mowed down her baby boy in your Fiat Punto with a box of Miniature Heroes. So in conclusion, I'm an awful person and I don't deserve your forgiveness.

This is my friend Cassie and she really likes chicken nuggets.

Her thirst for the little lumps of pulverised chicken guts is funny because Cassie is a girl and I'm disappointed every time I remember Cassie's pockets aren't filled with moonbeam lollipops or marshmallows made by unicorn babies. There's probably just some spare change, a cigarette lighter or lint in there. I'm just guessing, I've never asked because "Hey, so, what's in your pockets?" is a question only friendly muggers or a drunk Gollum could get away with asking.

Cassie fucking loves chicken nuggets. If it rhymed and she had more pop culture relevance, 50 Cent should have substituted his "Love you like a fat kid loves cake" line for "Love you like Cassie loves chicken nuggets". Were I ever to be dangling off one side of a bridge and there was a single chicken nugget hanging off the other and Cassie only had time to save one of us I wouldn't fancy my chances. I feel a bit silly using the word 'fetish', but I don't think phrases like 'keen interest' or 'enthusiasm for' quite convey the severity of her passion for chicken nuggets, so I'm going to have to go with it. Cassie has a chicken nugget fetish.

We had a conversation about how great a pizza with chicken nuggets would be that went exactly like this:

Cassie: Wouldn't a pizza with chicken nuggets be great?

Myself: Yes Cassie, it would.

So we made one. Here's a recipe that's easier to follow than Charlie Sheen's Twitter. (See, I haven't been locked away in an Eastern European prison for the last six weeks, I still know what's up).

1) Nuggets take longer to cook than pizza. To ensure both finish cooking at the same time, cook the nuggets on their own a little first.

Here are some nuggets about to be put into the oven. The more astute amongst you will notice a distinct lack of pizza.

2) Once your nuggets are half cooked stick those squishy little dickheads on a pizza and put it all back in the oven.

If you compare this photo to the one above, you will see that the quantity of pizzas present has increased by precisely 1.

3) Eat the bastard.

CHICKEN NUGGET out of CHICKEN NUGGET

Top 1 Pizza: Meat Lover's

2011-01-30T21:53:00.000Z

I grew up in Oxford and went back this weekend because my friends were putting on a night that we all used to go to when I was a young 'un. This night's heyday was about five years ago and most of my memories of it involve rolling around on broken glass and hi-fiving people after they'd been sick. Sorry Jesse Lacey but I'm glad I didn't stay 18 forever. That said, drinks were drunk and fun was had and this was the flyer:

Anyway this is all sort of irrelevant because if this blog starts becoming more about my issues with my ever escalating age and less about pizza then it's gone horribly wrong and I should just give up and move to Egypt. I feel the most interesting/least uninteresting thing about this pizza is that it was a lesson in context, in the sense that despite being no better than your average 4am takeaway sludge-fest, there were outside factors that lifted this pizza out of the cheesy mire and into genuinely non-awful territory. A victory for crap pizzas everywhere, Lord knows they needed one.

These contributing factors were three-fold. Firstly I was really quite drunk, and as a result more positive and enthusiastic about things like spicy beef and BBQ sauce. Secondly, it was fucking freezing and the two slices I scoffed in the shop before running home acted like an electric cheese blanket for my belly. And finally when I convinced my friend to let me into his house with a subtle, yet assertive amount of knocking, I had to eat it on the stairs because that was the only floor space not occupied by irritated, nagging bodies. It was completely dark on the stairs, which meant I was able to redistribute the energy I'd normally spend on using my eyes to my taste buds, which gave everything a little more oomph. I don't want to give this pizza more credit than it deserves, it was way too cheesy and it's name has overly homoerotic undertones. To be honest it was just well timed, that's all, but then so was Woodstock so I guess I shouldn't really dismiss it on those grounds.

7 out of 10

Pizza Sandwich

2011-01-19T02:05:00.002Z

When I first had the idea of making a pizza sandwich I imagine I was equal parts hungry and smug. In retrospect, next time I'm feeling 'smungry' I'll listen to the little voice that's telling me what a disgusting slob I am and that I'd be better off eating an Elevenses breakfast bar and shutting up. Sorry blood pressure, it wasn't anything personal.

Here's a bit of context to hopefully pry the tiniest bit of sympathy out of you: I was really quite hungover and there were two Morrison's thin and crispy pizzas sitting in my fridge looking sad no-one was eating them. Pizza empathy got the better of me and I decided I couldn't stand idly by and do nothing about this, but with two pizzas and only one slot left in my daily meal allowance it was like Sophie's Choice but with toppings. The solution to the two pizzas, one plate dilemma seemed obvious at the time, but looking back I now see it was the culinary equivalent of deciding the solution to itchy mosquito bites is shotgun shells.

If you're ever faced with the unlikely situation of suffering from a split personality where one identity is Kevin Spacey in Seven and the other is the fat guy that Kevin Spacey kills with baked beans in Seven then here's the recipe for a slightly less boring alternative to beans for your psychotic, biblical suicide:

Step 1) Get two pizzas that are the same size.

Step 2) Put them on top of each other, one face down, so the toppings are touching.

Step 3) Cook them.

Step 4) Eat them.

Step 5) Hate yourself.

I did this at about 4 in the afternoon, felt dreadful for the rest of the day and had to go find a dark corner in the street to make myself vomit that evening at work. GOOD TIMES.

NEVER AGAIN out of 10

Pizza Quest Sells Out

2011-01-09T22:20:00.001Z

I have a friend who works for a clothes company called Lazy Oaf. They've got a jumper that's covered in pizzas, so knowing I'm partial to pizzas she decided it would be best for everyone if I had one.

This is it:

It's a bit like that Simpson's Halloween Special where Homer gets his head transformed into a giant donut and he keeps nibbling himself, except 80% cotton is perhaps less tasty than a genuine pizza so it's unlikely that I'm going to start ripping chunks out of my belly and eating them, at least not in public.

They also gave me this little pizza necklace:

The necklace is pretty shiny and I don't know if it's too girly for my hairy, man-neck, but free stuff is always appreciated so I can't really complain. If this whole pizza thing goes too far and I start a crusade against crime as a pizza-themed vigilante then it's good to know I already have most of my costume sorted out. I know it's not on the same level as having your parents gunned down in Crime Alley but my phone got nicked the other day so I also have a tragic origin story prepared. Thinking about it, perhaps it would be irresponsible for me NOT to become a pizza themed super hero. The Mozzarella Avenger? The Scarlet Slice? Suggestions welcome.

Lazy Oaf also asked me some questions, so if you fancy exploring the deepest recesses of my psyche in my most revealing and shocking (read: first) exposé yet, looky here.

If he were still alive, Henry Rollins would be so mad at me.

Domino's: Duluxe with Double Decadence 'Basil Burst' Base

2011-01-02T20:23:00.003Z

I've been really lazy and not put up a review for a while. I'm not going to apologise, I don't owe you anything, I never agreed to do these at a specified rate, so leave me alone and please stop hassling me about it.

Obviously no-one has actually hassled me and there have been precisely zero concerned e-mails asking if I'm OK or if I've choked on a stuffed crust or OD'd on cheese or some other Darwin Award worthy death. I'm fine, no need to worry non-existent fan base.

Speaking of bases, Domino's have got quite creative with their previous 'Double Decadence' idea, which, in case you're blissfully unaware, is when they slip a thin layer of cheese between two thin crusts effectively turning the whole thing into a giant, revolting sandwich. The Domino's creative team, no doubt operating from a dark tower lined with human heads on spikes, in a forest filled with bats, have taken this concept one step further, (which, if you're keeping track, is two steps too far). So now, instead of just boring old cheese they've generously given us the option of the 'Basil Burst' base. Despite sounding like a headline in the obituaries section of the CBBC newspaper, it is in fact something far worse and not nearly as funny.

I didn't actually check the ingredients of the 'Basil Burst' filling, but I don't think I need to because I'm fairly sure it would look like this:

Soap (64%), Salt (22%), Green Plasticine (9%), Regret (5%), Not Basil (>1%).

Basil Burst eh? More like Basil Worst! Don't worry, my New Year's resolution is to finally come up with one genuinely funny joke. I think I'll manage it eventually, I've got a good feeling about August.

2 out of 10

Pizza Hut: BBQ Civil War

2010-12-06T17:32:00.000Z

Pizza Hut have two pizzas with barbecue sauce on instead of tomato. Do you give a shit which one's the best? Of course you don't, but carry on reading anyway because that time's not going to kill itself is it? It's way too jolly.

On the left hand side we have the BBQ Steak. He's got chicken, steak and onions. It was a pretty good combination, and I got over excited and started eating before I took the above photo. That's why there's a teeth shaped hole in one of the slices. It's not because the delivery man got peckish on his way over and hoped no one would notice. I wouldn't have blamed him for having a cheeky chomp but I would have noticed and chased him back to Pizza Hut like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, latching onto the back of his moped with my liquid metal fists and killing his ass.

On the right it's the New York Meatball. Something about having 'New York' as a prefix makes a food automatically sound tastier. I'm not sure why this is. American cuisine could be considered a slow form of suicide. The yummiest suicide mind you, but suicide nonetheless. Incidentally, one you're all bearing witness to right now, AND YET DOING NOTHING TO PREVENT. Hope your bags are packed because I just sent you on a guilt trip. Zing.

After much consideration I've decided my favourite was the BBQ Steak. I think that's because it's toppings were most in keeping with the barbecue theme. I don't know whether this means consistency is an attribute I value in my pizzas or whether, if the government were made up of pizzas, I'd vote Tory because I hate progressive pizzas (This won't be why because I love wacky pizzas, look). Either way BBQ Steak, I crown you 'king of the Pizza Hut pizzas with barbecue sauce instead of tomato', a trophy you can proudly place next to your trophy for 'being a pizza that exists' and 'getting digested frequently'. Bravo you cheesy scoundrel, bravo.

Pizza Quest vs Papa John

2010-11-18T19:01:00.001Z

As far as high street pizza delivery companies go I've always had soft spot for Papa John's. Unlike Domino's their pizzas don't taste like they should have a "Made from 100% Recycled Materials" stamp on the base, and unlike Pizza Hut I don't feel like I'm committing a cardinal sin against blood pressure when I eat one. Look, here's me being pretty happy with a Papa John's. That said, I have recently been on the wrong end of a rather nasty trait within Papa John's delivery policy: laziness. Now I know this is a bit like Josef Fritzel calling the NSPCC because he doesn't like the way his next door neighbour shouts at his kids, but humongous hypocrisy aside, for a pizza DELIVERY company Papa John's sure hate DELIVERING.

Here's the premise: I was at work, I wanted a pizza, I went to Papa John's website to order one, I was told I was outside of their delivery area, I thought this must be a mistake because there is a Papa John's literally five minutes away, so I e-mailed them.

From: Me
To: Papa John's

If I was on a moped, it would literally take me 5 minutes to get from your store to my house yet somehow I am still 'outside' the delivery area. May I suggest upgrading from horse drawn carriages to actual motorised vehicles so that you can deliver to people outside your immediate eyeline. You cannot be serious.

P.s. http://pizza-quest.blogspot.com I will bury you 'John', BURY YOU!!!

*******

From: Papa John's
To: Me

Dear Joe,
Thank you for your recent email.

In order for me to fully investigate this matter I would be grateful if you could recontact me with your full postcode.

Once I am in receipt of this information I will then be in a position to fully investigate this matter and respond to you accordingly.

In the meantime I would like to thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

*******

From: Me
To: Papa John's

Yes, hello.

The address I was ordering from was E8 2PB. Good old Google maps says it would take a whopping five minutes to drive there from the store. I'm curious as to what the cut off point in journey time is for a trip to not be worth it? 4 minutes? 3 minutes? The few seconds of airtime a pizza thrown like a frisbee has before landing?

Forgive the whole "bury you" threats on my previous e-mail, I was just really hungry. REALLY hungry.

Joe

*******

From: Papa John's
To: Me

Dear Joe,

Thank you for recontacting me with the information I requested.

I have now had the opportunity of investigating this matter and I can confirm that your address lies just outside of the specified delivery area for this outlet.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused you however Im sure you will appreciate that a boundary has to be imposed at some point.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information.

Kind regards,

*******

From: Me
To: Papa John's

Dear *****,

Thanks for getting back to me. I understand that there has to be some kind of boundary, but it's not like I was ordering a pizza while sitting in my little wooden shack in the Himalayas. I was literally five minutes away. I mean, why bother having a phone ordering service at all when, to get it delivered, people have to be so close to the store they could just shout their order at you? You could save a fortune on phone line rental; money that perhaps could be put towards hiring a second delivery boy, maybe this time one without a crippling case of agoraphobia.

I'd be very interested to know where the 'imposed' boundary of the Hoxton Street branch lies. This is my local Papa John's you see, (that's 'local' as in the generally accepted definition of 'being within the same geographical area', not the Papa John's definition, which is apparently 'being within arms reach without having to stretch too much, or get out of my warm, comfy chair '). I very much look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Joe

*******

This was last week, and since then I ain't heard shit.

Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes: New York Hot

2010-11-02T18:19:00.002Z

In the photo, on the corner of the table, that's a regular box of Tic-Tacs. As you can see, this pizza was huge. 26" in fact. In dick terms that's about four and a half average male dicks or twenty-six average Danny Devito dicks. That's a lot of Danny Devito dicks. I was going to go on to how it tasted but I realise that's going to sound a bit gay straight* after all the dick talk, so I'll chat about bowling instead. Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes is in west London, near Holborn and Russell Square. They have this whole 50's Americana vibe going on, which is fine except some of the bowling equipment is actually from the 50's and looks so old it's about to explode. The conveyer belt that brings you your bowling balls back nearly resulted in us getting our fingers crushed about ten thousand times. I guess all the danger adds to the wild thrill that is the extreme sport of ten-pin bowling. Surprising no one, I suck at bowling.

They have a diner there with actual, leather-lined booths and everything on the menu is stereotypically american. Hot dogs, burgers, corn dogs, religious fundamentalism, milkshakes, French toast, basically anything a yank away from yankland could want. Most importantly though, they have 26" pizzas. I have to confess, and I don't know whether this will cost me respect or perhaps earn me some: I didn't eat this pizza all by myself. I had help. But only from a girl which is almost as good as no help at at all, amirite lads? Lads? Chest bump?

You'd think the issue of quality over quantity would arise with pizza like this, but it didn't because this pizza was really, really good. And massive which meant there was a lot of the good to be had. I was tempted to give this 10 out of 10 but I'm kind of reluctant to because I think I'm saving my first 10 out of 10 for a pizza that I just 'know' is the one. Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes pizza, I can't marry you but you will always be a immensely important pizza in my life. Always.

9 out of 10

*"gay straight" LOL.

The Orange: Regina

2010-10-27T21:21:00.006+01:00

At the moment 'The Orange' have an offer where you can get any pizza for £4.99. Orange are good at offers. 'Orange Wednesdays' made Wednesday my third favourite day of the week. My favourite is Thursdays because it means it's almost the weekend and, like Christmas, the real fun is in the anticipation. Sundays are my second favourite because you're encouraged by God to be lazy. I think one of the cons of being Jewish, besides never being able to lick a pig, would be having your Sabbath on a Saturday. It must suck having to sit around putting effort into not doing anything while at the same time your less Yiddish friends are running around having a blast, probably eating hot dogs and having sex without a blanket in the way. But then I guess you'd get to go wild on Sundays so it all balances out.

In Orange all the staff wear these disgusting lime green sweatshirts with matching New Era caps. Most of them seem to be typical Hackney yoofs, sporting delightful almost-beards and some pretty imaginative ways of wearing their caps. One guy had perched it so far forward on his head that it was covering his eyes and he must have been operating the till by detecting rebounding soundwaves. He was Daredevil if Daredevil had chosen to sell pizza instead of being a ninja.

I was pleasantly surprised with this pizza. They actually had a proper pizza oven and for a cheap takeaway pizza the base wasn't a total stodge fest. Sadly it's on Kingsland Road, almost directly opposite where I work which means it could end up being way too convenient, so the chances of me finally becoming a supreme fatty are looking pretty high.

I should perhaps point out that Orange the phone people have nothing to do with Orange the pizza place. They just have the same name. I wouldn't want anyone making an idiot of themselves because they tried to negotiate margerhitas into their talk plan after I'd misled them.

7 out of 10

Also posted on CuiZine

Due Sardi: Due Sardi

2010-10-16T17:48:00.005+01:00

You know how sometimes bands release a song with the same name as the band, like "One Night Only" by One Night Only* or "Love City Groove" by Love City Groove? That's basically what Due Sardi have done, but with a pizza. I imagine that happens when a band is so thrilled with the name they've come up with they want to stick it to as much stuff as they can. Sort of like how George Foreman thinks 'George Foreman' is such a shit-hot name he wants to give it to as much stuff as possible. Like all six of his sons or his most favoured child, his grill.

Due Sardi is a Sicilian establishment down the bottom of Kinglsand Road next to Jaguar Shoes and Catch. This is the first pizza I've had for a while that tasted like it was made by a real-life, honest-to-the-Catholic-god Italian from Italy. I don't know if the guy who cooked this was actually Italian, but if not they certainly do a good impression of one. Much better than mine, but then all I really have as influences are the chef from the Simpsons and Mario, so it's not my fault my Italian accent is borderline racist.

It had pepperoni, red onion and pecorino cheese on. Although, as you can see in the photo, the pizza base was kind of wonky and the onion distribution was a little haphazard I feel these imperfections added to the authenticity. I could imagine this pizza being made in the hills of Sicily in some old, stone shed containing a woodfired pizza oven, surrounded by olive trees that rustle in the warm Mediterranean breeze and a bunch of old dudes with moustaches sitting around eating bruschetta and chuckling about how awful daughters are. If that's the case and my taste buds have nailed it I should also commend the delivery guy for how quickly he must have bombed it through Europe on his little moped. Sicily to Dalston usually takes more than twenty minutes.

9 out of 10

*I've just remembered the song is called 'Just For Tonight', not 'One Night Only'. Although they're different words they mean more or less the exact same thing so my point still stands, as does my laziness because I can't be bothered to think of another example to replace it with.

Simultaneously posted on CuiZine

Pizza East: Spicy Sausage, Mozzarella, Padron Peppers

2010-10-06T04:28:00.001+01:00

Pizza East is a restaurant on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road; if you know the area, it's where T-Bar used to be. I went to T-Bar once about five years ago and all I remember is that it was really hot and everything was kind of orange. It's possible I've confused this memory with the Britney Spears Slave 4 U video, but what I do know for certain is that I kept buying really expensive beer and reluctantly danced to minimal techno. Basically it was awful and when I die, for all my sins, I will wake up in T-bar and never be able to leave.

I'm much happier with this incarnation, I can't imagine an instance where I'd prefer minimal techno more than pizza, but then I can't imagine an instance where I'd prefer minimal techno more than lying in a bath full of angry fire ants, so that comparison may not carry much water. Even so, Pizza East, I like what you've done with the place.

Another thing I liked was how all the waiting staff had matching Levi's, Converse, and high levels of Italian sexiness. That was a nice touch. I'm pretty sure I fell in love with our waitress about eight times. I do however have one small criticism, I feel the menu should point out that it is totally literal in the toppings it says your pizza will have. You'll notice in the pizza description above there is an absence of the word 'tomato'. Under the weight of my skull-crushing naivety I assumed that, considering it was a pizza, it would have tomato on, in the same way I'd assume that because it is Lindsay Lohan's nose, it would have cocaine in. Apparently not (I can only vouch for the pizza, I have not personally checked the contents of Miss Lohan's nose and, as of writing, have no plans to).

This was a shame because everything else on the pizza was really good, and I had a slice of my friend's pizza, avec tomato, and it was delicious. Obviously this made the gaping hole in my pizza about a eight times worse and, as a result, too salty because of all my tears. With hindsight I regret not asking our sexy waitress two things. Primarily whether my pizza would have tomato on but also whether she felt it was too soon in our relationship for her to spend this Christmas with my family and I.

7 out of 10

Chicago Town: Ltd Edition X-Factor Takeaway Pizza

2010-10-04T06:06:00.001+01:00

Just in case you never talk to anyone ever, sprint past tabloid stands with your eyes shut and the only time you leave your sealed-off, soundproofed cave is to go to the frozen food section of Sainsbury's, Chicago Town have kindly come up with a pizza to remind you that it's X-Factor time. Unsurprisingly it's an unhealthy, artificial cheesefest, and the pizza's not great either. Zing! How do you like those apples Slime-on Bowel?

I never really understood that phrase, because I like really apples. I'd probably put them in my top three fruits of all time, along with mangoes and satsumas. (I find oranges too much hassle to peel and they're too big whereas satsumas are kind of like natures fun size Mars Bars; way more manageable). Point being, if somebody asked me how I liked those apples, chances are I'd probably say something like "yes, they were delicious, thank you" which would no doubt lead to an awkward silence.

This pizza was kind of boring. I usually like Chicago Town but this one was just a bit "meh", less a pizza, more of a pizzzza. I think I need to start branching out into more interesting pizza places in London. If you've got any suggestions then please, by all means, suggest away, because this guy left the mustard as uncut as a DVD rerelease of Cannibal Holocaust.

4 out of 10

Cirrick: Mixed Pidde

2010-09-29T04:54:00.002+01:00

I know what you may be thinking, the 'Z' button on my keyboard is broken so I'm using the 'D' one instead and hoping you won't notice. What a silly idea, of course you'd notice, you're not an idiot,* and anyway, my 'Z' key works fine, look: zzzzzzZZzZzzzzzZzzzzzzzzZZZZZzzZZZZ.

'Pidde' is actually what Turkish people call pizzas. It sounds too much like 'piddle' for me, which isn't something I want to be thinking about when I'm getting down to some intense cheese ingestion. I think they should just stick with 'pizza' or if they're going to be picky about it, 'Turkish pizza'. Less of this 'pidde' nonsense please. Basically Turkey, if you could kindly readjust your entire dialect and culture to make your food sound more appetising to a pedantic, whiny English boy that would be just super.

Cirrick is a Turkish restaurant in Hackney. When we asked the waiter for any recommendations he said we should get Chinese food. I didn't say at the time but I felt this was poor waiter-ing. Does he not realise that were we to take his advice and leave to get Chinese food instead then his restaurant would miss out on our valuable cash-money? This would lead to a dip in profits, which could result in cuts in staff and he might get fired?

Maybe that's what he wants, maybe he hates his a job, but doesn't have the guts to quit, maybe the restaurant owner is a sweet old man, whom, even though the waiter hates his job and wants to join the circus, he doesn't have the heart to leave. If this is the case I'm sorry I judged you so harshly Chinese-promoting-Turkish-waiter. You have a good soul and I almost feel guilty that I did not storm out to buy noodles. Next time I come in I will tell the manager that you squeezed my thigh for eight seconds and would not stop even though I asked you twice. I'll shave and wear a Digimon t-shirt as well so I look younger, which will make you look creepier, and make it more likely that you'll get fired and put on the sex offenders register. It's cool, I don't think the circus gives a shit about rapists.

Despite a name that sounds like a phrase used during potty training, it turns out Piddes's are pretty good. I couldn't work out what cheese it was, it wasn't mozzarella, but it was tasty. Also the bread was good. Well done Turkey, (the country, not the bird, I don't want those guys stealing any of Turkey the country's credit, so back off Turkey the bird).

8 out of 10

* I have no proof for this, in fact it's quite possible you are an idiot, perhaps even likely, after all, you have chosen to spend precious minutes reading about some pizza I ate this one time.

Ask: Napoletana

2010-09-22T02:21:00.001+01:00

Hey, Aquaman, I know that oil spill is more or less sorted out now but don't go hanging your jellyshoes over your very-hard-to-light fireplace just yet, there's another nautical disaster at hand. Someone is taking all your subjects and dumping them on my pizzas. On the Ask menu it makes out you'll get a normal amount of fish, like a couple of anchovies and a prawn or two, nothing extravagant. That's a total lie. On my plate there were half the inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean. Due to the overhead perspective of the photograph there is a slight loss in depth perception so you may not be able to tell but those toppings were about 4ft high. My pizza was basically a cheesy mass grave for a tunacide. Although say what you will about mass graves, they're certainly cost effective.*

I've been getting quite into fish recently, I think it's because I'm trying to do less supermarket shopping and go to littler shops instead, so I've started visiting the fish men on Stoke Newington High Street. I've only been in a few times but in six months I expect a conversation like this to be the norm:

Me: Hey Paul, hey Terry. (these might not be their actual names but these seem like fish guy kind of names so quit whining and go with it.)

Fish Guys (in unison): Joe, how you doin' guvnaa?

Me: You know, same old, same old. How was your weekend away Paul? Where was it you went? Bognor Regis?

Fish Guy Paul: Yeah it was nice you know, just me n' the misses. Mind you, she didn't want to do nothin' but sit on the beach all day. Bored me 'alf to deaf it did.

Me: Women eh? (I'd do that sort of half eyebrow shrug, tutting thing, which Paul would reciprocate).

Fish Guy Paul: Yeah, tell me about it.

END SCENE

Then I'd buy some scallops and leave. I think I've got the basis for a sitcom there, I might make Paul and Terry ex-mafia goons trying to go straight and call it Sleeping with the Fishes. I could play a clueless middle-class secondary character who occasionally gets tangled up in their hair-brained, fish-based, crime heists. Bet you wish you'd thought of that one, don't you Larry David?

4 out of 10

*I stole this joke from the Onion, I have no remorse and it won't be the last time I do this.

Fire & Stone: Sydney

2010-09-01T21:02:00.001+01:00

This was my second foray into Fire & Stone. This was my first, read it if you haven't, so I don't have to repeat myself or, if you've already read it, re-read it if you don't have anything better to do. Those are sort of trick choices, because the 'nothing better to do' option is kind of defunct in that, if you actually have nothing better to do than re-read me natter on about a stupid pizza then may I suggest suicide as something 'better to do'. Basically, re-read it only if you are somehow incapable of suicide, e.g. paralysed, Roman Catholic, wimp etc. If any of these labels apply to you then you are excused, and by all means re-read away.

Sydney is both a city in Australia and a pizza in Fire & Stone. The former may be more well known than the latter at the moment, but I have a feeling a shifting of the scales is on the cards. This was a damn tasty pizza. Possibly my favourite Australia related thing since the TV show Oz and that wasn't actually about Australia, it just sounded like it was. It was more about brutal prison violence and gang rape. What a lark. Still, sounds preferable to five minutes in a pub with an Australian. I'm joking, those guys are great, and definitely don't have an annoying attitude or accent, no way Jose, top blokes, the lot of them. Everybody needs good neighbours and all that.

There was meant to be an egg on this pizza, and I think there was but I couldn't find it anywhere. I think it was mixed in with the sauce somehow because I could kind of taste it. Unless of course my brain was tricking me into thinking there was egg so it wouldn't have to think up creative insults and threats for the waiters when it was bill time. This is possible, my brain is terribly lazy. If it can get out of doing any work at all it will. It delegated my A-level psychology exam to my lower intestine. I got a U. Seemed my lower intestine knew absolutely nothing about cognitive theory, sorry Mr Dixon,

8 out of 10

Whole Foods Market: Vegan Calzone

2010-08-30T02:03:00.000+01:00

I now live in Stoke Newington. Stoke Newington's full of hippy cafes and yummy mummies with graphic designer husbands and over dressed babies; so it should come as no surprise that there's a Whole Foods Market that charges £80 for a pepper.* I went in once, mostly to see what rich people look like but also because I was hungry. They had this guy for sale for something like £3. At first I thought that was pretty good, but I realised that it was cheap because not only were there no dead animals in it, there was nothing from living animals in it either. Apparently some people have to eat food like this. It's a condition called 'veganism' and as far as I know, there is no cure. When's Blue Peter going to wake up and do a 'Save the Vegans' appeal? Kids could put signs up in their local butchers, have fund raising barbecues and hog roasts, maybe even sell a few t-shirts.

Sadly they didn't have any meat calzones, but if they did I would probably have had to take out a small mortgage to pay for it so maybe that's for the best. Just to be clear, I like animals, they're cute and it's funny when they think they're humans and do things we do, like wear clothes or act surprised when they're put in a microwave. However I like animals the most when they are dead and in my belly, so it was a shame there was aubergine pretending to be a slice of ham. God knows what the cheese was made out of, and anyway, don't cows like being milked? Surely it's like getting a sexy nipple pinch every day. Their self esteem must be through the roof.

6 out of 10

*This is hyperbole, I never saw a pepper that was £80, but you get the gist. If you don't, here is an explanation of the gist: The food is expensive.

Papa John's: Papa John's Favourite

2010-08-23T17:49:00.000+01:00

People have been hyping up Papa John to me for ages and I feel bad that I've never tried one until now. I think I have a fairly legitimate excuse in that there wasn't one that would deliver to my house in Nottingham. Like any reasonable person I got so sick of this I to moved to London, where the streets are paved with mozzarella. If you've never been to London, don't worry, this is a metaphor. Mozzarella would surely be one of the worst materials to use for paving a street, other bad choices that spring to mind would be honey, oil paint, soap or eggs. Thankfully they seem to stick to concrete in most places, which is far more sensible. Good call Hackney council!

This pizza was apparently 'Papa John's Favourite'. I hope they didn't mean this literally, and just meant the topping. I'd hate to imagine Papa John hunched over a photo of the actual pizza I actually ate, sobbing tomato puree tears while other mythical food mascots, (Ronald Mcdonald, the Dolmio muppets, Tony the Tiger etc.) try to comfort him. If this is the case John, and I've more or less eaten your son, is it any consolation that he was really tasty? Because he was.

The delivery man couldn't find my friend's house so our pizza arrived slightly colder than I would have liked but that's cool because Good Will Hunting was on TV. I like that film. I like the bit where Robin Williams keeps telling Matt Damon that "It's not [his] fault" until Matt Damon starts crying. I'm going to try that one day, just keep repeating the same sentence over and over again at someone until they break down.

8 out of 10

The Old Angel: Pizza Burger

2010-08-18T01:51:00.000+01:00

I liked this guy. I had the option of getting curly fries with him, but for some reason I chose wedges. I don't know why. I wish I'd chosen curly fries, I love them and I think I must have forgotten I love them. For me, curly fries still seem like some kind of exotic, exciting treat that you only have on special occasions, like the last day of school before summer or at some rich kid's twelfth birthday party. I'm talking about this all retrospectively of course, about curly fries evoking a sense of nostalgia; as in 'going to children's birthday parties when I was also a child', not going to them now I'm a hairy grown-up. I don't go to the birthday parties of twelve year old's anymore, (they've stopped inviting me, the little shits). I'm going to give this pizza credit simply for having curly fries as an option, regardless of whether I had them or not.

I know the picture's a bit crap but have you noticed something odd about this pizza? Something peculiar that you can't quite put your finger on, something that sets it apart from all the other pizzas on this blog. Like the others it had tomato puree and cheese, ingredients traditionally essential for something to qualify as a pizza, but something's still not quite right, so what could it be?...

SPOILER ALERT

It's not a pizza you dummy, it's a burger! You see how it says 'Pizza Burger' up there and how the photo is a photo of a burger and not a pizza? See how all the little clues come together? Like the second time you saw The Sixth Sense, or the first, depending on how old you are, it suddenly seems so obvious. I hope I haven't made you feel like a schmuck with this shocking twist. Don't feel bad if I have, I got outsmarted by a postbox the other day and had to go ask the lady in the post office what to do.

8 out of 10

Rescue Rooms: BBQ

2010-08-11T21:27:00.001+01:00

If you live or have ever lived in Nottingham then skip this paragraph because this will all be old news. If you haven't lived there skip it anyway because it's going to be boring. Rescue Rooms is a bar and venue that has a small kitchen that sporadically churns out pizzas. On most of their clubnights they sell massive slices for a pound that, like an insecure fat woman, are big, sloppy and fall apart if you try to pick them up. During the day however you can get a whole, real-life sized pizza all to yourself, which is what I did.

I like pizza as a party food, especially at £1 a slice. Pretty girls and cheap pizza lead to the video below happening on an almost hourly basis. To such an extent that now a group of Korean (at least please) 18 year olds thrusting pizza and god knows what else in my direction means eyelids barely get batted and pulses stay at a consistently unimpressed rate.

Anyway, as usual this is irrelevant because the pizza I had was eaten at a far more respectable hour and I was barely drunk or anything. It was BBQ and had chicken on I think, I can't remember, it was a while ago. You can get 2 for 1 on Sundays or something unless they've closed the kitchen, which they may have done considering, as I said, it was a few weeks ago I ate this. A lot can happen in a few weeks. I remember that the cheese could have been a bit better. High quality cheese never hurt anyone, except the livelihood of cheap cheese farmers who have to be laid off because of plummeting business. Wizard of Soz cheap cheese farmers, don't hate the player etc.

7 out of 10

Zizzi's: Mare E Monti

2010-07-26T00:35:00.000+01:00

My Grandad came to visit me the other day, I think it was because I recently graduated from Uni and am now a real-life, grown-up adult man with responsibilities and duties and shit. If this was the case I should think about graduating more often because if I got a pizza like this every time it would be totally worth it. I didn't go to my actual graduation ceremony. I don't really understand why anyone would. I've had this conversation with a few people about my controversial stance on this issue so forgive me if I'm sounding like a grumpy, broken record. Basically if I wanted to pay £100+* to the institution that I'd spent the past three years paying over £10,000 to for about four hours a week of their time, just so I could sit through a three-hour ceremony where I applaud hundreds of people I don't know for getting qualifications that only they, and the forty other job applicants waiting in the company lobby will have, then it would suggest I hadn't been so educated after all.

Do you hate it when people have a rant and then say "rant over" like it's not obvious that it's over because they've stopped ranting? I do. You wouldn't do that for anything else. Like if you said "What do you call a Mexican victim of car theft? Carlos." and then felt you had to say "joke over" just in case people were still waiting for a punchline. But that rant, and this minor rant about rant closure policies are both, mercifully, over. Back to the pizza! (starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.)

Mare E Monti means 'Sea and Mountains', which almost makes sense as this was half courgette and prawns and half spicy sausage. Prawns definitely live in the sea but I'm not so sure about pigs living in mountains, but then you do get goats in mountains so what do I know? Well, when it comes to the average altitude of a pig's natural habitat, apparently not much. To anyone reading this in search of juicy pig trivia I can only apologise and ask that next time, could you perhaps misspell 'pig' three times less drastically. Anyway the pizza was really good, and quite big and had dollops of creme fraiche and I almost couldn't finish it. Obviously I could finish it and did, but it was less of a walkover than usual. Take that, my ever-diminishing chances of a healthy adulthood.

9 out of 10

* Three tickets: £75, hat and gown rental: £30, hotel room for the parents: £50, photo of you dressed like a tit holding a piece of paper: meaningless.

Bella Italia: Carne Mista

2010-07-20T17:21:00.000+01:00

I've only been to Bella Italia once before. It was when I was about twelve and I went with my Dad and all I remember is my Dad getting angry with the waiting staff because they kept asking us if we had finished our meal when we obviously hadn't. I don't think we left a tip. So with such a troubled history I was understandably hesitant about whether they'd remember and spit in my pizza and make jokes from the kitchen about my new haircut. It's really short so I was thinking they would be little digs about me looking like a U.S. marine. "Here's your pizza sir, hoo-rah!" and so forth. Witty kitchen bastards.

I went for the Carne Mista. I haven't checked and I won't because I'm sure I'm wrong but wouldn't be be great if, in English, Carne Mista meant Mr. Meat? It would be totally appropriate because this pizza had a modest zoo worth of animals on. All dead obviously. Don't worry, one of my pizza comrades had one coated in vegetables so it all balances out karma wise.

Dare I say it but it might have been a bit too meaty, perhaps a little plant life would have balanced out all the death. My other pizza buddy had the right idea, a bit of meat AND a bit of veg. Radical thinking from her there, well done.

8 out of 10

Fire & Stone: Bombay

2010-07-15T15:29:00.000+01:00

Fire & Stone is a pizza restaurant in Oxford. I think they have one in Covent Garden and Portsmouth as well but who's ever been to Portsmouth? I know I haven't, at least I don't think I have. Actually maybe I have been to Portsmouth. Yep, to get a ferry to the Isle of Wight when I was younger, I'm sorry, I lied. So in answer to my own question: who's been to Portsmouth? I have. Have you? Don't worry about answering, I honestly don't care!

Fire & Stone's menu is divided into six sections, one for each continent. And I do know there are seven continents but they leave out Antarctica because coming up with Antarctica-themed pizzas would be tricky. Is penguin even edible? I guess Eskimos eat seals all the time but I always imagine they'd be really chewy. And I wouldn't fancy eating a seal either! A-HAR!

This international menu kinds gives out a 'pizza will save the world' vibe, that pizza is an oven in which the dough of world peace will be baked. I'm not sure if I agree with this, I mean, yeah I'm obviously pro-pizza and everything but I doubt Palestine would chill out about everything just because Israel cooked them a couple of pizzas; unless of course they were Hamas and pineapple! A-HAR no.2!

I had the Bombay which was like a chicken curry pizza. It was pretty good, except it had yoghurt on, which is a bit weird for a pizza, but i guess you get yoghurt in curries all the time so maybe not that weird. I don't know. It was good, I liked it, our waitress was nice. In fact she was too nice, like she wanted something from us...

For that I'm deducting a point.

8 out of 10

Pizza Party

2010-06-28T16:17:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I became a serious contender for the title of 'oldest living human'. To celebrate my entrance onto the world stage of professional not-dying I had a few buddies over. True to one-trick pony form I asked everyone to bring pizza toppings so we could all build, cook and then eat some pizza. Preferably in that order. This is what went down.

Being an arty-farty bunch, people seemed pretty keen on out-pizzaing one another. I'm all for innovation and originality and everything, but this here is a pizza with dough balls on. Call me a cynic but when you have bread below a topping and above a topping, that's not a pizza, that's a sandwich.

I sort of asked people to choose toppings that they felt represented themselves. If you had to describe yourself to someone but couldn't use words, only pizza, how would you do it? People came up with some pretty good ones. Jason, for example, is a little bit Caribbean, so his pizza had a little bit of Reggae Reggae sauce on, which is a little bit Caribbean, like him. What a clever chap, here is a photo of the proudest moment in Jason's life.

Most people, due to, I imagine, chronically stunted imaginations, were boring and just chose toppings because they liked them. I suppose it could be argued that this may suggest my friends have pretty healthy self-esteems, but I doubt it, or if they do they shouldn't. Generally they're pretty rubbish. Here are some examples of people thrilled by their own mediocrity:

I'm joking of course, my friends are all beautiful people and I am head-over-heels in love with all of them. Look, here's Nick rabbiting on about who-gives-a-shit:

Putting Brian Sewell on a pizza is pretty inspired. I think Nick should enter it into the Turner prize next year. I'm sure Brian would love that. He should call it 'The Art Critizza'. However Brian Sewell-pizza was only one half of a two-part pizza exhibit. This is Pete; he made a Jackson Pollock-pizza that Brian Sewell-pizza was going to be critiquing. Pretty high brow stuff eh? I guess it raises that age old question of "Does pizza imitate art or does art imitate pizza?" Here's Pete being adorably downhearted about it all:

I managed to annoy even more of my guests with inane pizza-questions.This is Shiri being asked pointless questions about ricotta, after you watch it I'm going to tell you another cheese joke.

Q: What cheese do furry, heavy-metal listening, fresh-water mammals enjoy?

A: Rock-otter!

Here are some more people being polite and humouring me by pretending to enjoy my party. Thanks guys, you're all the best.

How wonderful for everyone.

I call this photo "A Proud Father".

Bye.

Chicago Town 'Knork'

2010-06-18T17:51:00.000+01:00

If you buy four packs of Chicago Town Deep Dish pizzas, cut out the tokens on each one and send them off to Chicago Town (the company, not the city) a few days later a Knork will arrive. Too much hassle? You can always take the more practical route of starting a god-awful pizza blog in the vain hope that a nice lady at Chicago Town will read it, pray for your swift death by heart failure and send you something to make the shovelling of pizza into your mouth all the more efficient.

At least that's what happened to me. I have four tokens sitting on my desk that I was going to send off but the big CT beat me to it. A 'Knork', for those that don't know, or more likely, don't care, is half KNife, half fORK. I suspect what they've done, and I can't be sure, is combine the two halves of both words. I guess they didn't go for 'Fife' because sex sells and men (and lesbians, it is 2010) might send off for a Knork hoping to get a parcel containing a single, solitary boob.

I'd say it's more fork than knife. That is to say, were I to try and mug Crocodile Dundee with my Knork and have him disparage the knife-ness of my Knork by demonstrating how much more knife-y his knife was I'd have a hard time disagreeing with him.

They sent me a three page press release with my Knork, detailing how revolutionary my new Knork will be to my life. Obviously they are right, because it is. I now think of my life as having two separate eras: pre-Knork and post-Knork, and in my head, everything pre-Knork is grey. They also go on about how great Chicago Town Deep Dish pizzas are but my favourite bit is at the end where they say "available in all major supermarkets... and Iceland."*

*I added the ellipsis for comic effect, they didn't put that in but they should have. I don't think I've ever been in an Iceland, but then I am very middle-class.

Primavera Sound 2010: The Definitive Review

2010-06-11T13:38:00.139+01:00

Primavera Sound is in Barcelona which is in Spain. I can't decide which is worse, Spanish music videos or Spanish haircuts. I guess I'd say Spanish music videos probably have the edge because usually more money has been invested in a music video than a haircut so it's more of a failure that they're so awful. That said, the amount of dudes sporting dreadlocked mullets (dreadlet? mullock?) was terrifying. It's just the grossest haircut ever.

See? It looks like his head is taking a massive shit down his back. Ew.

I think that's why people go to Primavera, a chance to escape these hippy wankers. Either that or the bands. I mean either that, or the bands OR THE PIZZA!

Anyway, enough mild racism, on with the reviews...

Margherita with Oregano

I had this guy on my first day in Barcelona and he cost two Euros. 'Euros' are what they use in Spain instead of Pounds. They're like the Pound except worse, but at least they're better than the Dollar. Here's a handy algebra equation explaining what I just said:

$<€<£.

Arithmeterrific!

I think he tasted pretty good although I'm not sure how much attention I paid because I was too busy keeping passing dreadlocks from dropping into the cheese. Seriously it was like juggling except with filthy clumps of dead tissue instead of juggling balls.

I remember he was pretty herby. Like, if this pizza was a robot he'd be R-Doob-D-Doob. That's cool though, I like herbs. At least I don't mind them. If they keep themselves to themselves, don't go flaunting their herbiness in my face or nuthin' we ain't got a problem. I am herb-tolerant.

SIETE out of DIEZ

Pepperoni Pizza-Cone

There'd been a lot of hype surrounding these guys, and I'd heard stories about them before I even bought my Primavera ticket. You probably don't have to be Jonathan Creek to work out what a Pizza-Cone is, but just in case you're his idiot sidekick that used to be in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps I shall tell you. A Pizza-Cone is a cone filled with pizza. Yum, right? Wrong, not yum.

Whether you like Pizza-Cones depends entirely on how much you like things that taste gross. If you love things that taste gross, you'll love Pizza-cones. You know how Cornettos have a lump of chocolate at the bottom, well the same could be said of Pizza-Cones if you substituted the word 'chocolate' for 'bitter-uncooked-yet-somehow-burnt-stale-death-bread'.

DOS out of DIEZ

Telepizza BBQ

I think Telepizza is the Spanish equivalent of Dominos. If I owned a company who a customer would ring up on a TELEphone to order PIZZA, it makes about a thousand times more sense calling it Telepizza than naming it after a game grandmothers play in nursing homes while quietly awaiting death. Nice work Telepizza.

Gripe time: Have you ever been to a barbecue and been served minced beef or ham? If you have, shut up, because you'll invalidate my argument. I think that for a pizza that is working the 'BBQ' angle, the meat has to be representative of that. I guess the sauce was a little barbecue-y, but barely. In my head I'm shrugging my shoulders. Less nice work Telepizza.

CUATRO out of DIEZ

Catalunyan Bread

Okay, I know this isn't really pizza, but I felt three posts was a bit pathetic for a whole week in Spain. It's sort of pizza, it's bread with tomato on. No cheese though, does that still count? Actually, cheese is probably essential when it comes to constructing a pizza. If this isn't pizza and I review it then I'm basically just reviewing food, and if I decided to review all the food I ate, rather than just the pizza, I'd be writing (at least) three posts a day. I can honestly say, I could not be arsed to do that.

That would probably be quite a good weight-loss scheme. If you had to write about everything you ate, you'd barely eat (assuming you're operating on similar lazy levels as me). I can see Kerry Katona or someone endorsing that diet. Although it might be a bit implausible if she did it because I'm not sure whether she can read, let alone write anything. Girl can eat though.

Babe.

N/A out of DIEZ.

Simply Chicken and Pizza: Ham and Green Pepper

2010-06-04T03:38:00.001+01:00

On the street I live on there's about a million takeaway places that do pizza. People, I can't remember who specifically, have asked why I don't review those pizzas, and I've said, in my snootiest voice, that I don't review them because I'd only eat them when I was drunk. Well right now, I am drunk so it seems fair to review the pizza I just bought and then ate. Deal? Deal.

In Simply Chicken and Pizza you can get a medium pizza, (2 toppings), chips and a drink for £5. "Alright!" I said in my head, and possibly out loud. Not out loud, just in my head. for realz. I got ham and green pepper, because it seemed like a pretty safe option and the list of potential toppings was quite small so i couldn't really see it so i thought i better choose something they'd definitely have.

For my drink I chose a passion fruit Rubicon because, and I think you'll agree, Rubicon is the best thing to ever come in can form. I don't know why big shops don't sell it, it's so good. I wish taps came in 'hot, 'cold' and Rubicon. I'd wash in that stuff. I'm not even joking. I am joking, think how sticky you'd be. You'd die of wasps.

Chips were chips, pizza was gross, Rubicon was phenomenal.

Rubicon out of 10.

Co-op: Stonebaked Pastrami

2010-06-02T00:40:00.003+01:00

I don't mind when supermarkets start branching out into non-supermarket things, like Tesco Mobile or whatever, but I think Co-op go too far. Co-op Funeralcare for example. Now call me paranoid, but I find the idea of eating food sold to me by people who will potentially make money if I die, slightly unnerving. That's like buying skis from a wheelchair salesman, or shampoo from a wigmaker.

Mind you, it seems I don't find it that unnerving as I happily wolfed this guy down. I like it when pizzas think outside the box almost as much as I like it when pizzas ARE outside the box, so I really enjoyed the whole New York vibe this guy was going for. Pastrami with a sachet horseradish mustardy stuff is something I haven't come across before.

Have you ever been to New York? It's great. If you haven't, it's pretty much exactly like how it looks in Ghostbusters 2, or in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist or Crocodile Dundee. Basically any film set in New York is an accurate and reliable depiction of what it's like. Except for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, that shit's ridiculous.

8 out of 10

The Walk: Chicken, Sweetcorn and Olives

2010-05-23T17:19:00.002+01:00

The Walk is a little tea shop in Nottingham owned by Cake-Fairies. In the kitchen Granny Cake-Fairy sings this song about cherries and sugar and kittens while she bakes, and there's a constant stream of woodland creatures coming through the door. It's all quite childish and girly, like something out of a Disney movie except pinker. Obviously I am way too much of a hetero-dude to like all that but the five year old girl inside me, (the one I ate for lunch LOL*) loves it.

They also have Uncle Cake-Fairy, who is, as was a condition of his parole, employed as their pizza cook. He's drunk and racist and you can hear him making lewd comments from the kitchen about the pixie waitresses. It's fine though because he churns out some pretty good pizzas.

They serve the pizzas on pieces of slate. My suspicion is they let drunk Uncle Cake-Fairy write the shopping list and he misspelt 'plates', so they got lumped with 'slates' instead. No-one wanted to call him up on it because he gets violent after a couple thimbles of dizzy water.

Obviously I didn't eat the olives because I don't hate myself, but the rest was all pretty good. The base was a bit hard, kind of like a breadstick, except not in the shape of a stick, and also not bread. So actually nothing like a breadstick.

7 out of 10

*Not LOL, it's been a slow week.

Ask: Calzone con Carne Piccante

2010-05-15T03:13:00.003+01:00

You guys know what a Calzone is don't you? If you don't, first I slap my tongue stuffed lower lip/chin at you and then I tell you it is basically a folded over pizza. Yumz o'clock right?

Go to an online translation website. Try this one. Type in 'Calzone' as an Italian to English translation and see what you get.

Yeah. I know. What the hell is that all about? My guess is some hilarious Italian dude folded a pizza in half, it caught on, as a joke he called it a 'Calzone' and, like a bunch of trusting idiots, we just assumed that 'Calzone' was Italian for 'folded over pizza'.

I bet whenever Italians overhear tourists go on about how tasty that Calzone was, or how much they enjoyed putting that Calzone in their mouth, they have a little snicker and do a tiny, patriotic high-five in their heads.

It would be like if kebabs suddenly caught on in Rome and the Italians were begging to know what these suspiciously hairy parcels of almost-meat were called and we decided to be really funny and told them kebabs were called 'scrotums' and then Italians would be all "Yeah, let's go eat some scrotums, boy, I'd love a good English scrotum right now. Mmm, mmm, mmmm. Yummy, yummy scrotums" And then we could all have a laugh because it was a really elaborate, nation-wide joke we were all in on.

That said, it was perhaps one of the tastiest pranks I've been on the receiving end of, so this time Mario, I'm going to let it slide.

9 out of 10

(> 4-Way Pizza Rumble <)

2010-05-10T01:03:00.001+01:00

I haven't posted anything on here for over a week. If anyone thought that this was because, like a normal person who has been eating the same food almost daily, I'd got sick of pizza and had given up then, I'm afraid, you'd be both wrong and an idiot.

Four pizzas go in, only one comes out. As in 'four pizzas go into some kind of metaphorical battle', not 'four pizzas go into my digestive system, only one comes out'. Were that the situation I'd desperately need to see my doctor about a nasty case of pizza retention. Anyway, meet the contenders:

Pizza Express: American Hot

This is the supermarket version of Pizza Express and it was half price in Waitrose because it was out of date or something. So far, so good. When I was younger I'd avoid ordering this because, in my head, it was dangerously spicy. If I could go back in time I'd slap nine-year old me for being such a wuss, force him to eat one of these and then tell him to not waste possibly hundreds of pounds on Warhammer over the next two years and buy a skateboard instead.

Chicago Town: Footie Feast (Limited Edition)

I don't know what connection this pizza has to football. There were sausage balls on it, does that count? I don't know. I don't like football very much, it's not the actual game that bugs me I think it's just how worked up people get about it. Everyone just needs to chill out. I think if the players didn't get so excited when they scored then that would help. Maybe a little thumbs up to the crowd, a polite handshake for the guy who crossed the ball in, none of this triple-flip-rip-my-clothes-off-kiss-you-on-the-mouth stuff.

BBQ sauce stuffed crust ftw btw.

Pizza Express: La Reine

This is another supermarket Pizza Express. It was also reduced, but only by 75p, so I'd say the American Hot has the edge. And it had olives on, obviously I picked them off, for they truly are the grapes of Satan. 'Reine' is French for 'queen'. Do you think they mean royalty or camp, gay guys? This didn't seem like a very gay pizza, I mean, the mushrooms were a bit herby but I don't think anything can be inferred from that.

Bakerino's Sausage Pizza

This guy is definitely the underdog but it has the advantage of being part of a deal where you get any pizza, any cookie and any drink (not vitamin water) for £2.99. The pizza was pretty shit but the cookie was amazing. It was oat and raisin. Seriously, I would have this again just for the cookie. That's not to say the bottle of coke wasn't good, but it was just a bottle of coke. Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked and god forbid I deviate off the topic of pizzas. The pizza was pretty boring and the sausages were just Wall's or something. Nothing to write home about:

"Dear Mum,
   I ate an uninteresting sausage, just thought you might like to know.
   Love,
   Joe"

See? What a shit letter.

THE VERDICT

Chicago Town: Footie Feast!!!

Congratulations Chicago Town. You were my favourite. You won because when I ate you I was super hungover and was watching a shitty Bill Murray movie, a.k.a. the perfect Saturday afternoon. Well done.

Chicago Town 'Edge to Edge' New York Deli

2010-05-01T14:51:00.001+01:00

I've come up with, what I feel, would be a rather good advertising campaign for this pizza. Basically U2, the band, have finished doing a concert or whatever and their guitarist or bassist, (I neither know nor care), 'The Edge' walks over to a pizza and picks up a slice. He's about to eat it when he is hit over the head by a steel chair. It is revealed that the wrestler 'Edge' really wants the pizza and takes it from 'The Edge's' unconscious hand. I like this idea because it's a visual metaphor for the name of the pizza as it shows the pizza's passing from 'Edge to Edge'. Plus watching members of U2 getting hit with stuff would never get old.

This pizza hates crusts. It's crustist. I think I agree, I might be a closet crustist. I'm not one of those losers that leaves a plate full of crusts, but I think I eat them just so people don't think of me as a crust-leaving loser. Is that bad? Should I stick to my guns and just leave the crust and not a give a shit what anyone else thinks? Maybe if I say I'll only leave unnecessarily fat crusts, but is that too much of a compromise on my crust policy? Should I maintain my integrity and leave all crusts, regardless of size?

What a dilemma!

6.5 out of 10

Pizza Express Capricciosa

2010-04-27T15:05:00.002+01:00

I once got angry with Pizza Express for messing up my order. (Here I am in a rage that will burn your eyebrows off, read if you dare or need a quick alternative to plucking).

Guess what. It happened again. You'd think I would have totally hulked out and beat the waiter's face into a Sloppy Giuseppe, but I didn't. This was because, this time, it was my fault. In my head I definitely said "no olives" but turns out the waiter wasn't psychic so lo and behold: I got olives.

How great would psychic waiters be? They'd walk up to your table, everyone would be all quiet and thinking about what food they wanted and the waiter would just scribble it down, and at the end you wouldn't have to do the 'bill please wave', or ask for another drink or anything that involves the now glaring impracticalities of talking. They'd just know. From now on I'm tipping at 5% until they get psychic waiters.

When it said there was going to be egg on this guy I had an image of a fat, fried egg in the middle, which would have been great, not lame-o, boiled egg slices. A psychic waiter would have known this and sorted it out. Just saying.

7 out of 10

Pizza Hut Buffet

2010-04-25T16:56:00.002+01:00

About two years ago I made a promise to myself that I would never have the Pizza Hut buffet again. Sorry me, turns out I'm/you're an untrustworthy, weak-willed sneak. In my defence I only ate it for the sake of this review, because I was walking by and that it's £5.49 for unlimited pizza.

PIZZA FACTS:

Pizza Hut pizzas are cooked in motor oil.
That whole 'Pasta Hut' thing never happened. It was just a dream you once had.
The CEO of Pizza Hut is called Jabba.

These are just a selection of the slices. I didn't want to review them all because it would be boring for you and embarrassing for me. I'm not going to tell you my magic number either. It's gross.

No meat? Seriously? There was a mysterious yellow cube on this guy, I didn't know what it was, all I know is that it wasn't meat and was poorer for it.

4 out of 10

This guy had little white lumps on that turned out to be chicken. He also had BBQ sauce instead of tomato. I really like BBQ sauce on pizzas. This is an awful, shameful secret that I hide from people like I'd hide the dead bodies of nine-year olds in my attic. (Don't worry, I don't have an attic).

7 out of 10

Pepperoni.

I almost wrote 'nuff said'. God, imagine if I had. That would have been dreadful.

6 out of 10

This was a slice of Hawaiian. It was only when I got back to the table that I realised there was no ham on it, just pineapple. It was a fruit pizza, and therefore one of my five a day. Healthy living!

5 out of 10

Gregg's Pepperoni

2010-04-18T22:29:00.001+01:00

This guy costs £1.19, had six pieces of pepperoni on and was slightly smaller than my hand. Those are probably the most interesting pieces of information about this little chap I can think of. I read somewhere that there are more Gregg's in the north of England than Starbucks. I don't really know what can be gleaned from this, perhaps sausage rolls are more popular in the north (likely) or expensive coffee with names that are hard to pronounce is less popular (also likely). Whatever the reason I don't think I care, sausage rolls can fuck off.

Gregg's needs to sort out their pepperoni distribution. If I hadn't specifically asked for this particularly meat-heavy guy I could have ended up paying the same price for what is known in the industry as a 'PepperNOni'. I wouldn't have been happy about that. Just thinking about it is going to cost you points Gregg or Gregg's. Also, stop hogging all the the 'G's, 50% of a name should never be made up of the same letter, that's just weird.

4 out of 10

(%) PIZZA FIGHT! (%)

2010-04-14T02:43:00.001+01:00

Chicago Town Deep Pan Pepperoni VS. Chicago Town BBQ Chicken

Woah. Pizza fight! How exciting. I thought just reading about me eating pizza might've been getting a little stale so I'm shaking things up with the welcome introduction of some cheese and tomato violence. Now these pizzas didn't have a fight in the traditional sense. I guess it wasn't really a fight, more a competition, but either way there were a lot of bad vibes. If they hadn't have been so busy being digested these pizzas would have totally snubbed each other at the end-of-game hand shake.

Because I'm an idiot and didn't think it through the photos above don't really give you any idea of the scale of these dudes. You'll have to take my word for it when I say this battle was the pizza equivalent of David and Goliath. The pepperoni guy was a fat hulk of a pizza, and the chicken dude was just a frail, prepubescent, sissy pizza.

I've never invested too much time into the whole bible thing. It's really long and someone spoiled the end for me, (he comes back to life), but there's actually some truth in there, at least if the David and Goliath chapter is anything to go by. Turns out the big one was too stodgy but the little guy had just the right amount of stodge. Way to go God. Good call.

If you're a total heathen and the biblical analogy is a bit too righteous for you then think of it like this: If Chicago Town pizzas were alcoholic spirits, a shot's manageable, but trying to drink a pint glass of gin would be pretty hard work.

Goodfella's Takeaway Fajita Chicken

2010-04-05T20:09:00.001+01:00

I might have to send Goodfella's another e-mail. Isn't having 'Takeaway' on the box of a frozen pizza a blatant lie? Surely a frozen pizza is the opposite of a takeaway pizza. Surely to be a takeaway pizza I should be able to ring up, order a pizza, turn up and TAKE a ready cooked pizza AWAY. Doesn't the fact I had to buy this in a supermarket and cook it myself totally undermine the whole of point of takeaway? Maybe by 'takeaway' they mean it (eventually) tastes like a takeaway pizza, you know, once you've done all the work. Accuse me of cynicism but, to me, that definition seems a little tenuous.

Semantics aside I have to give this pizza credit for breaking down ethnic boundaries. Mexico and Italy/America joining forces to create something that combines both their national dishes in one tasty meal. Next stop, haggis masala.

7 out of 10

Dr. Oetker Ristorante Pizza Salame

2010-04-04T17:19:00.000+01:00

It would be easy to lump Dr. Oetker in with other guys that aren't really doctors, like Dre, Fox and Who, but guess what, if you did, you'd be wrong. He actually was a Doctor. I've done about three minutes of research on him and it turns out that at the beginning of the 20th century Germans must have been pretty healthy because Dr. Oetker had enough time on his hands to invent a baking powder called 'Backin', which I think sounds like a Ludacris song.

Anyway there's a dark chapter in the Dr. Oetker history they don't tell you about on the box, (or the website, I had to rely on my initiative and use underground sources like Wikipedia). In the 1930's the owner of the Dr. Oetker company, the Doctor's son-in-law, was a total Nazi. The company even won some Nazi business award. This is their original design for the Pizza Salame:

Links with genocidal fascists aside, Dr. Oetker make a pretty sweet pizza. The base is thin without being flimsy and they have this yummy basil pesto stuff that's ace. I am going to dock a couple of points for the whole holocaust thing though.

6.5 out of 10

Domino's Tandoori Hot on 'Dominator' Base

2010-04-02T16:52:00.006+01:00

I didn't expect this pizza to go very well and was trying it more of an experiment than because I wanted yet more cheese. For a start, and I know I've said this before, I feel 'Dominator' sounds a little threatening. Like there's a chance that when I open the box, this pizza will jump out and rape me, and in a way it did. Mercifully, with cheese instead of a penis.

In case you're blissfully ignorant of what a Dominator base is, it's when Domino's try and smuggle even more cheese into you by stuffing not just the crust, but the entire pizza with an extra layer of cheese. Sometimes I imagine my mouth as the U.S./Mexican border, Domino's as a Columbian drug/cheese-baron and their pizzas as poor South Americans who have been bullied into swallowing condoms full of cheese to try and sneak past me. Like I'll look at the pizza and be all "Yep, everything seems to be in order. Move along please" but secretly there's all this extra cheese they think I don't know about. Obviously I do know, because I can taste it and it's gross. It's like Dairylea but with herbs, i.e. not really cheese.

I've made up a not-very-funny pizza/music joke:

Q: What's the Big Pink's favourite pizza delivery service?

A: Domino's!

LOL Edmonds or what?

4 out of 10

Goodfella's Pepperoni Pocco

2010-03-31T01:55:00.002+01:00

What's a Pocco? I don't know. I'm assuming it's Italian for 'mini-pizza' because it said Pocco on the box and there were mini-pizzas in the box. Seems logical enough but I thought I better check before, God forbid, I make a sweeping cultural assumption. On the Goodfella's website there isn't anything about them.* What's stranger is that if you type 'Pocco' into an Italian-English translator nothing comes out. It's almost as if they don't exist...

If they don't and I just imagined it then I have quite a tasty imagination. However, and I understand this is quite a silly criticism for a mini-pizza, it was a bit small. Now I know this is like complaining about a horror film by saying "It was good, but too scary" or jazz music by saying "it's all over the place, there's no tune" but this pizza didn't last long enough. Chicago Town have their mini-pizza size down to a T, although I do usually eat two of those at a time.

Actually scratch that, that's a perfectly acceptable criticism of jazz. I hate jazz. Jazz is rubbish. This pizza, fictional or not, was way better than jazz.

7 out of 10

*Don't worry, I've sent an e-mail to Goodfella's notifying them of this. I'll let you know how that goes down/if they send me free pizzas.

Domino's Half 'n' Half, Mighty Meaty/The Sizzler

2010-03-29T18:58:00.006+01:00

Domino's have three different pizzas that all have 'meat' as their theme. There's the Meateor, the Meatzza Pizza and the Mighty Meaty. I'm pretty sure they're all more or less the same thing. I suspect what happened is that they came up with three meat-based names and couldn't choose between them so instead made extra pizzas. I'd like to be the guy who has the job of coming up with the names for Domino's pizzas. Some of them sound quite threatening. The extra hot Meltdown: The Revenge for example. I don't know what kind of thing a pizza would want to avenge? Maybe you ate its mother? Or perhaps disgraced its family's honour by not finishing its uncle? (This depends on whether or not pizzas consider being eaten as a good or a bad thing). Either way, being spicy is a pretty poor form of revenge. Imagine if, in the Godfather, instead of the whole horse head in the bed prank they just put a chilli in the guy's sandwich. Don't mess with the Don or he'll make your lunch too spicy.

Recently I've ordered my Domino's on the thin crust because I found the regular base too stodgy but I might revert back because sometimes I think the base of the tray has got stuck to the bottom of the pizza and I've accidently eaten it. I haven't, it just really, really tastes like cardboard.

6.5 out of 10

Cape Meat Feast

2010-03-27T18:43:00.003Z

Cape's a South African restaurant in Nottingham that does 2 for 1 on all pizzas after 4pm. I don't know what's South African about it, I've never really thought of South Africa as having a regional cuisine. If racism was edible then maybe that could be the national dish, but until Nick Griffin starts selling BNPeanuts in Yorkshire pubs I don't think you can eat bigotry. In fact Cape may not even be a South African restaurant anymore, I'm pretty sure if it isn't, it used to be.

Anyway I like the pizzas at Cape because they bring them out on wooden chopping boards and you get your own pizza wheel. They're also nice and soft. Is that a really girly thing to like about a pizza? That it's got a delicate, fluffy texture? Do you think I'm a wimp for appreciating that? Do you think that when I eat a pizza that's too tough it hurts and I cry about it? Well, fuck you.

If I had one complaint it would be that my pizza was slightly deformed and my friend's had excess flour on the base. To me, this suggests that they were rush jobs. However this is a sort of double-edged criticism because we were running late for the cinema and had they taken their time I would of had to have watched Kick Ass two feet from the screen. Psychic chef, I salute you.

8.5 out 10

Pizza Vending Machines

2010-03-25T21:04:00.002Z

Check this out. A pizza vending machine. That's a bit weird. I'm not too keen on vending machines because they're usually overly expensive and they're making you pay for the convenience of not having to talk to some grumpy shop owner and I like talking to grumpy shop owners. Also the kinds of places where vending machines seem appropriate are like train station platforms or shopping centres, where the idea is you're perhaps a bit bored and hungry but not so hungry that you'd go and get a sandwich, you just want something to nibble on like a packet of crisps or a Twix. Not the full sized (I'm guessing 10"-12") pizzas this thing spits out. Look at that:

Even I think that's a bit gross. Do they come ready sliced? Or are you meant to sit there outside the swimming pool changing rooms stuffing an entire pizza into your mouth? Apparently there's this one in Italy that even cooks them with fresh ingredients. In 3 minutes. Not ready frozen or anything. There's a window where you can actually see little robo-arms kneading the dough and putting on the toppings and stuff. I'm hoping it also twiddles its robo-moustache and robo-chuckles when it pinches a passing lady-vending machine's robo-bum. The Italian swine. Seriously though, "Ew" (but shamefully also "Yum").

Waitrose American Style Hawaiian

2010-03-25T18:55:00.002Z

This guy was massive. It was the biggest pizza I've eaten in a while. Maybe I should put some kind of scale next to my pizzas to give an indicator of their size. Anyway this one was huge, I could of swam in it. This photo was taken from a crane, I was about 80ft in the air. Big pizza.

I got it from Waitrose and it had a little reduced sticker on so I saved a whopping 75p. Did you know that Waitrose keep files on shoplifters, and build up evidence on them over a period of months? I find that a bit scary. I always, perhaps naively, assumed CCTV in supermarkets was more of a deterrent than an actual crime-fighting implement. Like unless you went in with a large sack with a dollar sign on and a black and white stripe top how would they know to follow you around the store? Point being they have some pretty observant security guards so watch your back.

Not enough tomato.

6 out of 10

Pizza Express Pollo Ad Astra

2010-03-23T03:23:00.001Z

I ordered this guy on a Romano base which means it was meant to be bigger but when it came it was on a regular base. Needless to say I was furious. Those Pizza Express guys are lucky I was too hungry to stonebake them alive in their own oven.

I really like peppadew peppers. You can buy them in a jar and stick them in loads of things. Bolognese, curries, scrambled egg, sandwiches, loads of stuff, but this blog isn't called All Types of Food Ever-Quest so who gives a shit?

Anyway, yeah the pizza was good, and my Dad had taken me out so I didn't have to pay for it which was a bonus but the order mess up is going to cost you a couple of points Pizza Express. I know this kind of internet slam will potentially cost you millions but I'd feel I wasn't doing my job as a pizza critic if I let that kind of slip-up go unpunished. I apologise to the hundreds of faux-Italian waiting staff that will inevitably have to get a job in Zizzi's as a result of the fall out. Please don't wank in my pizza, I know what mozzarella looks like and what it doesn't.

7 out of 10

Asda Deep Pan Meat Feast

2010-03-19T03:53:00.005Z

I've already made my feelings about deep-pan pizzas clear. I'm not their biggest fan. This was probably one of the cheapest frozen pizzas you can buy, and you can tell because it's mostly air and air is pretty cheap. I'm going to make an alteration to my previous list of pizza priorities, now it goes like this:

Toppings

Tomato

Cheese

Bread

Air

I put some rocket on it because I felt guilty about all the dead animals I was putting into my mouth. Although I'm not sure how me eating salad makes up for pigs being killed and eaten. If the pigs could choose between dying but accompanying one of my five a day or not dying, I doubt they'd be so noble as to jump headfirst into the abattoir on behalf of my cholesterol. But I guess that's the guilt known as the 'meat eater's burden'.

There was some beef on there as well so I've got give props to my cows too. Cheers guys. Thanks for your corpses.

5 out of 10

Goodfella's Deeply Delicious Pepperoni

2010-03-17T04:40:00.003Z

I generally try to avoid deep pan pizzas because you spend most of your time eating the bread, and bread, for me, is the least important part of a pizza. Were I to rank elements of pizzas in priority it would probably go like this:

Toppings

Tomato

Cheese

Bread

That said, this was still a pretty good pizza. I generally like Goodfella's and even though this is like the most basic one they do I still enjoyed it. I think it's because they get the tomato to sort of soak into the bread so it doesn't feel like you're just eating bread, rather tomato bread. Which I guess is an improvement.

I watched a really shit film with my pizza. From Paris with Love. It was so bad. Basically John Travolta runs around Paris wearing a bald John Travolta suit being racist and awful. I usually like shit films, I have a quite high tolerance for them but this was so shit. I had a look on RottonTomatoes.com and even though overall, it got a pretty bad score, there were still a surprising amount of positive reviews for it. It made me doubt myself as a critic. "What if, because I can't appreciate From Paris with Love for the seizure-inducingly obnoxious pile of shit that it is, my taste in other things is questionable? Crucially: pizzas?!"

I was worried about this for about two seconds then I thought, "Nope, this film can fuck off, and my 75p Goodfella's Deeply Delicious Pepperoni pizza is pretty tasty."

7 out of 10

Personal & the Pizzas

2010-03-17T01:57:00.000Z

This is a band called Personal & the Pizzas. I like them because they sing about pizza. Although I think I'd still like them even if they didn't sing about pizza, they just wouldn't make me as hungry. It's like the Ramones but with way more pizza.

Their Myspizza

Personal & the Pizzas - Raw Pie

From now on if you see me eating a pizza this is the soundtrack that's going on in my head. Especially the bit in the first track where the backing vocals are all "PI!! - ZZA!!'. I really like that bit.

I might have a look for some other pizza themed music. Ducktails have a good track called Pizza Time, and an there's an old Heavy Heavy Low Low song called Pizza Party. I'll put up any other relevant pizza tunes that I come across.

I'm going to go cook a Goodfella's.

Tesco - Ham, Mushroom and Mascarpone

2010-03-15T03:49:00.003Z

I had a pizza today. It was from Tesco. Tesco have a pretty decent pepperoni that I usually go for because it's on a seemingly never-ending half price offer, (retails at only £1.74). It's a solid choice, good balance of cheese and tomato, generous quantity of pepperoni. I'm usually pretty happy with it. However that was not the pizza I had today because there were none left.

That meant I had to break out of my comfort zone. They had this mushroom, mascarpone and ham guy that looked tasty. I chose it mainly because it was pretty big and and part of their "Tesco finest/special/extra/not shit" range. The box was black and the writing was in gold. The kind of thing the middle class have on special occasions. Needless to say this meant I had pretty high hopes. For £3.90 it needed be something special. I'd say overall I was pleased, the mascarpone was my favourite part. I've got a pretty good mascarpone joke.

This is it:

Q - What cheese do you use to hide a horse?

If I had one complaint it would be that the tomato wasn't tomato-y enough or there wasn't enough of it. I'm not sure which. Either way this pizza didn't completely satisfy me tomato wise. The ham was good. I liked the mushrooms too. Overall it was alright. If I had £3.90 to spend in Tescos I'd consider choosing it again. Or I might just get two of their pepperonis and make a calzone. That would be sweet.

The answer to the joke is 'Mascarpone' by the way. It's funny because it sounds like 'mask a pony'.

7.5 out of 10