Pizzeria da Mario: Pizza Mario

The other week I went up to Oxford to visit my two little brothers. They're both at University there and when I tell people that they always ask if I mean Oxford Brookes. I don't, I mean actual Oxford-Oxford, as in the closest-any-of-us-stupid-muggles-will-get-to-Hogwarts-Oxford, and whoever I'm telling is a little surprised by this. They may deny it but I can read their eyebrows like two, hairy little books. I don't blame them for their scepticism, because it seems like a bit of a stretch that the same sperm - egg DNA combo can produce such wildly different levels of academic success; but such is the miracle of genetics, and it serves as a reminder that God is both very real and has a sick, sadistic sense of humour. Also don't we share something like 96% of DNA with potatoes or whatever? I can kind of believe this though because there are days when I sit around for so long I get this weird urge to peel off all my skin, chop myself up into strips and hug fried fish.

Anyway, this little place is on Cowley Road which is about as rough as central Oxford gets. I feel pretty confident I could mince up and down the Cowley Road at 2am on a Saturday night in acid-washed denim hot pants, several sealed and boxed iPhone 5s hanging round my neck on easy-to-snap chains, telling track-suited, overly gelled teenage boys I think they're sexy and slapping their cans of Skol out of their hands and not get 'crimed against' once, but then maybe the savage, everyday-is-a-battle-for-survival lifestyle I lead on the Mad Max 2-esque streets of Stoke Newington has given me an overly rosy view of the Cotswolds.

This was a good pizza even and, although it had artichokes on, we didn't have any problems. (It also usually comes with olives, but obviously I demanded they take those shrivelled little hell nuggets off because I had a whole colostomy bag of AIDS-blood soaked razor blades I'd sooner eat before I'd let  Lucifer's testicles get anywhere near my gorgeous, gorgeous face).

8 out of 10

Top 1 Pizza: Meat Lover's

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

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