Waitrose's Unconventional Fruit Pizzas!! Double Review Power Edition!!

I've been going to Waitrose quite a bit recently because it's fun to pretend I'm successful and middle class, when in reality I live in something that can only be described as half-flat, half-armpit. If there was someone in charge of maintaining the standards of middle-class living and they were to inspect my house, I would be stripped of my Cotswold laurels, dragged into the back of a pristine 4x4 and thrown onto the pavement outside the Sports Soccer in Swindon. And rightly so. 

Anyway, fruit on pizzas is not new. Look at Hawaiians. The pizza not the race of people. Although feel free to look at them as well, just don't be obvious about it. Wear sunglasses and do that thing where your head is facing one way and your eyes are facing another, but no one can see because you're wearing sunglasses. That's my favourite stalking/perving technique. I have many, but that's my favourite. Or at least my favourite that doesn't involve a full-body ghillie suit and pinhole cameras. 

Here's a couple of Waitrose's recent and ambitious forays into fruit on pizza. Let's all take a look shall we? No? No? Not you either? None of you? Fine. Just me then. It's cool, I'm quite happy in my own company and I have the new Usher song on my iPod, so screw you guys.

Calabria Inspired Salami, Red Onion and FIG Pizza

Before we get all figgy with it, can I talk about the fact that the salami has been inspired by something? How does that work? Is the pig shown flattering pictures of real Calabrese Salami and encouraged to reach for something greater than just being a run-of-the-mill, blue collar pork product? Was this salami made from a particularly aspirational herd of pigs? How do you inspire meat? I don't want to sound like a nit-picker, but if it can be inspired then are you sure it's dead enough to eat. It all sounds a bit silly to me. Silly old salami, silly old Waitrose, silly old pizza. (Also, I should point out I have no idea why this passage is highlighted in beige. I didn't do that, and if I did, I wouldn't have chosen beige. My theory is that, as the last person on Earth using Blogspot, the website's feeling starved of attention and has decided to act up in a pathetic, self-destructive cry for help. The Internet equivalent of facial tattoos.)

I'm not sure how I feel about figs. I think I'm slightly prejudiced towards them because of that Christmas carol about demanding figgy pudding. I always felt like a fat, Dudley Dursley-esque spoilt brat singing that. That's not to say I wasn't. It was just tough hearing it confirmed, out loud, by me and everyone else in the room. I'm sure you can understand the depth of the emotional scar this could leave on a child. Poor me and my Christmases spent feeling bad about the songs I had to sing. Where's my TV charity appeal Lenny Henry? Why haven't you recreated Flashdance to help me with my struggle Robert Webb? Needless to say, these experiences have left me a quivering shell of a man, full of nothing but insecurity, crippling terror and the odd internal organ. 

6 OUT OF 10

Lombardia Pizza with Salame Brianza, Blue Cheese and PEAR

I feel bad for pears sometimes. Not so bad that it registers on any kind of emotional scale, but bad enough that it seems worth talking about here and trying to desperately drag out a hundred or so words. This space won't fill itself you know. (<-- God's angry Mother, two minutes before the Big Bang). Anyway, the reason I sympathise with pears is twofold: A) I have too much time on my hands and so am able to spend it thinking about things this pointless and B) because I feel they get overlooked in favour of apples as the 'go-to' British fruit, when in fact they are much juicier, less easily bruised, and don't taste gross if they're more than a week old. I sort of see them as the best friend of a dull, yet hot and popular girl in this rather weak school = a fruitbowl metaphor. A bit like Ugly Betty. Although I've never seen Ugly Betty, I'm just guessing that that's what happens in Ugly Betty. It looks like that's what happens. I'd ask someone but have you ever met anyone that watches it? Of course you haven't. The only person that watches Ugly Betty spends all his time at home, watching Ugly Betty, not outside meeting people like you. If the 'pears are the overlooked, yet beautiful on the inside, (and out, post makeover montage obvs) girl' thing doesn't make sense, just watch any film about teenagers ever made. That's not a method of explaining my point, just a fun suggestion to pass the time because who doesn't like High School movies?

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.