Whole Foods Market: Vegan Calzone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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