Primavera Sound 2010: The Definitive Review

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

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

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

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

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 <)

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

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