Pizza in Britain

Subject: Pizza in Britain
From: bubblyrat
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 02:08 PM

Today, we received ,with the mail, a "menu" from pizza-sellers "Domino's" . Now, I like pizza ,,and Italian food generally , BUT ; these people, whilst featuring many different ingredients AND toppings , make NO MENTION whatever of the following ; green olives;black olives;anchovies;parmesan cheese : capers. I mean, are these people for REAL, or not ??? PS ;they do Coke and doughnuts !

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 02:26 PM

Come, now, anyone who still believes there's real food in takeaways, is likely to believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy too.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,scinecgeek
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 02:28 PM

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 02:37 PM

LOL... pizza from Domino's!?! never happen... any more than from Pizza Hut. Wonderbread covered with tomato sauce.

When I first went to college in western NY back in 1969, only the kids from down state had a clue what pizza even was... and only a few larger places with Italian populations even made it.

It's getting better... but the big chains are geared to the same folks who think that Bud lite is good beer...

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Elmore
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 03:00 PM

Sounds like b.s. to me.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 03:07 PM

Pizza in Britain? Try Pizza Express and / or Ask (one in Wells & York that I know of - any others???).

Oh - and there used to be an amazing place served on a corner of Camden Hight Street.

Dig deep - it can be found.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 03:15 PM

The London independant chain Franco Manca is very good.

By pure coincidence I have just returned from there. Me and my girlfriend often do on a Friday night. I had a Margherita with wild garlic pesto. (Their wild garlic pesto is a bittersweet green paste of total joy) My other half had the anchovie, black olive, and capers one.

They even serve bottles of Green Daemon pale ale, a beer I'd never heard of before I started going to Franco Manca's: it's gooooooooooooood.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Musket
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:05 PM

Pizza Express are a rather curious outfit. They make rather good pizzas and have acceptable restaurants I don't mind visiting, yet by their name, they sound like the fast food junkie shit found on every High Street. If it weren't for the one in Meadowhall shopping centre having a table once when everywhere else wsd fill, I would never have found it. I give junk food a wide berth. Stand downwind of a KFC and tell me it isn't child abuse to take your children there.

Here's something. I tell all my family that when we have our annual week in Southwold, there is a normal, typical cafe on the pier that makes pizza that ranks as high as I can think of. To the point that I look forward to it almost as much as The Swan or either pub in Warberswick.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:19 PM

My first ever was somewhere near Tottenham Court Road in London ca 1969: "if you haven't ever had pizza, you haven't lived" - well I lived that night! Probably now a Pizza Express, but remember watching them slapping out all that dough into paper-thin rounds (what is all that "deep pan" and "stuffed crust" nonsense?)
Later moved to Brighton, and used to go regularly to a restaurant in The Lanes called Al Forno - also good Italian cooking.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 05:04 PM

I had a pizza fritta and the missus had a Margherita in a little pizzeria in Naples last October, in a back street just across from the archaeological museum. We had to sit right next to the wood-fired oven. Rough as a bear's bollocks, it was, cheap as chips. I will never buy a pizza in the UK ever again.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 06:07 PM

I keep getting leaflets from an outfit calling itself 'Farmhouse Pizza'. I haven't tried them - probably made with turnips or mangel wurzels or summat.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Rahere the sober
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 06:34 PM

On the downside, I was dragged in extremis to a Frankie & Bennies by a bunch of students just outside Cardiff. There, I ordered a Boddingtons. When did they remove the alcohol content from it? And how the hell can the Welsh tolerate such an insult to the brewers art?

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 04:46 AM

I had pizza in Rome and it was dreadful. A smudge of something red and yellow on a slice of lukewarm shoe leather.

On the other hand, I've had a good pizza from Pizza Hut in the UK. It took a while to arrive though - fast food it wasn't.

There's good and bad everywhere.

DC

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: bubblyrat
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 05:22 AM

Never been to Rome (too crowded) but ,holidaying in Italy a year or so ago, we had fabulous wood-fired pizzas in Assissi , and also great pizzas in a restaurant oddly called "Finisterre " or something like that, next door to the cathedral in Florence.Best ever for me ,though ,was in Christchurch (Dorset) ; a simple,uncomplicated Margherita ,with a saltire of asparagus,the quarters garnished with dollops of goats cheese and cranberry sauce ;utterly delicious !!

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw Italiophile
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 06:52 AM

Napoli is the home of pizza. I can't imagine anyone being served up a bad pizza there. Too much pride in what is now a jealously guarded traditional dish. Pizza napoletana is a thing of gastronomic beauty, not easy to reproduce by short-cuts in pretend pizza emporia. Might as well talk about Swiss single malts.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 08:02 AM

I recommend Pizza Margherita in Moor Lane, Lancaster - it's been going thirty-five years and I have probably been eating there off and on for just about that long.

http://www.pizza-margherita.co.uk/index.html

They used to have a branch in Kendal and another in West Yorkshire, but they seem to have disappeared.

Also recommended, further up Moor Lane, is Dominick's Takeaway, who also produce the food for the adjacent Gregson Bar and Restaurant. Their pizzas are excellent, as is everything I've tried from there (looking forward to haggis on Burn's Night).

Ross

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 08:21 AM

VPN stands for Verace Pizza Napoletana-do you have any in your local area-if not, don't
Fret.

""...a pizzeria should be judged on how its pizza tastes, not on what alphabet soup is on its sign, or on whether the toilet paper in its bathroom is imported from Naples.""

Article on VPN 

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 11:36 AM

Another vote for Pizza Express. Wouldn't bother with any other pizza joint. Plus you can get plonk too.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 11:55 AM

As for dominos, had one once. It was bland doughey tasteless shit. Genuinely awful.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 12:08 PM

Pizza Express are good, and I've had good experiences with ASK. Toko the kids to pizza hut a few weeks ago (we'd been given a money off voucher) and apart from the mediocre pizza which was hardly better than a supermarket frozen pizza, the whole experience was ruined by an over-zealous waiter who was virtually begging us to fill in a questionnaire telling the management how good the service was. Never again

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: bubblyrat
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 12:30 PM

Is the Pizza restaurant in Marlow a Pizza Express ? If so, we have often eaten there and quite liked their offerings; plus,they serve Trebbiano , a favourite white wine of ours !!(difficult to find in other places ).

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 04:14 PM

The first pizzeria to open in Seattle opened around 1950 or so and was called "The Leaning Tower of Pizza." It was opened by a tall, good-looking Italian-American guy (no accent either real of affected, but a really zany sense of humor) named Tony. Never heard his last name. Really great! I've had good pizzas since then, but none as good as the ones that Tony produced.

In the mid-Fifties, I spent several months in a physical therapy sanitarium in Denver (trying to alleviate some to the effects of having had polio when I was a toddler) and I met a nurse there named Bianca. She was very Italian (accent and all), and she got a bit of a snort out of the popularity of pizza in the United States. She said that apparently America troops in Italy first encountered it during World War II and carried the idea back to the U.S. and it became something of a fad.

What caused her to snort at bit was that, as she said, in Italy, pizza was anything but gourmet food. She said that people usually made pizza when they had a little bit of this and that, bits of meat and such, olives, mushrooms and all that, but not enough of any one thing to turn it into a meal, but they wanted to clean out the refrigerator. So—they would bake the pie crust, cover it with cheese, and scatter odds and ends of whatever else they had in the fridge, then bake it, simply to get rid of it and start anew—without wasting the odds and ends.

Tony's "Leaning Tower of Pizza" is no longer there, but it has been replaced by a veritable plague of pizzerias of varying quality, mostly quite limp and bland compared to what Tony used to produce. But happily, there is one pizzeria near where we live, "Toscani's Pizza" that cranks out a really good product. Eat there, or they deliver.

I've often wondered if what Bianca told me in the mid-Fifties was the straight scoop. I presume it's true because she wasn't given to "BeEssing," and it does sound kind of reasonable.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 05:25 PM

Pizza Express American Hot has been a favourite since I used to go to Peter Boizot's original restaurant in Soho in the 60s and 70s. Now, at the franchises since Boizot sold out, I find them a bit thin. Best pizza in Britain? For years that's been from Salvo's in Headingly, Leeds. Best pizza ever was from the pizzeria upstairs in the Mercatore Centrsle in Florence. After 30+ years trying to create s great pizza at home I reckon it depends on two things: the oven and the flour. This summer I built my own wood-fired oven in the garden and, as winter drew on I bought a small commercial single deck oven and installed it in the kitchen. The best flour I'd s combination of Italian OO hard durum flour and finely ground semolina which I brought back from Italy in my luggage. So now I reckon that some of the best pizzas in Britain are at my house.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 05:27 PM

You don't have to stick with pizza, though: the Alsatian version is flammenkuche and if anything is a step up again: you can find a sampler size in Waitrose, but they're really too small. In the other direction, we also have My Old Dutch in London, which use a pancake base.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Anne Lister
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 07:38 PM

Pizza Express and ASK are good - our favourites by far however come from a local place here in Abergavenny (home of good food generally) called Pizzorante. It's an independent restaurant owned by and run by an Italian family who made most of the furniture in it as well as the food (but you wouldn't confuse the two!).
But I wouldn't trust a pizza place that offered no olives or anchovies ...
And personally I can do without flammenkuche (which we found as a local dish in Flanders). Too much cheese, not the right kind of base for me.
Anyone got any recommendations for where to eat in Padua?

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Musket
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:24 AM

I don't THINK I've had Alsatian pizza but to be fair, when you stagger out of a nightclub and into a pizza joint, three parts pissed, you aren't totally sure what meat their nights staff have left.....

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 02:34 PM

What you might have had is the flammenkuche sold in Delhaize, Anne, which was sold on the supermarket mass pizza section and bears as much relationship to the real thing as Pizza Hut's offerings bear to a Neapolitan pizza. The closest indiginous similarity I've ever heard of - bear in mind I'm a quarter Belgian, I've my great uncle's recipes (he was an Ostende patissier) and spent 18 years living in Brussels, not infrequently travelling into Flanders - is a version of tartiflette, which might match what you describe but isn't real flammenkuche - which is German, the Belgian for the kuche bit is couque in both languages, on the way to becoming Cake in English. They may have borrowed the term as the closest simile to what they were doing, and a number of Flemish are close to the Germans. Flanders was the only country to raise a volunteer Waffen SS Regiment in WWII, one of the Patissiers' brothers was one of them, end of his involvement in the family as the rest were Resistance, the Guiot-Massart family behind La Libre Belgique free newspaper. Where did you discover it?

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 04:50 PM

The worst : IKEA calzone. Weirdly moreish though...

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 06:07 PM

Then there's Pizza Cottage in Barnard Castle. Driving home late from Tyneside to LSA Lancs we'd order one from West Aukland around 11.45 so it would be ready to pick up 'round midnight, then just about ready to eat upon arriving in Kirkby Stephen half an hour later where we'd picnic in the car listening to Bob Harris (although I remember once it was the other Bob with his Theme Time Radio Hour) whilst watching the Lish Young Buy-a-Brooms cavorting around the market place.

We try and eat more sensibly these days...

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,giovanni
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 01:43 AM

quote

"plus,they serve Trebbiano , a favourite white wine of ours !!(difficult to find in other places )."

Not at all difficult to find, more difficult to avoid. Try Frascati, Orvieto, Lugana - all of which are 100% Trebbiano.

The Trebbiano grape grows easily all over Europe - in France it's called Ugni Blanc - and is generally used for simple wines, most of which are sold in bulk at about €1 a litre from the local co-operative.

Remarkably, it is also one of the grapes used to produce genuine balsamic vinegar - that's the €800 per litre stuff, not the industrial imitation you get from Tesco. Even more remarkably, the other grape used is Lambrusco, as those just happen to be the two grapes that predominate around Modena.

On topic, I'm lucky to have wonderful pizza just a 7 minute walk from my home at €7 a pop. Or €8 if you want something fancy. Add €6 for a litre of rosso and the two of us are done for €20.

g

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: bubblyrat
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 07:07 AM

Now there was me thinking that Trebbiano was a wine as opposed to a grape !! Silly me ; I am not much up on things Italian ; I was given the choice of learning Italian when I did my "Euroqualification" course at Bournemouth Uni, but I chose Dutch instead and ended up working in Kortrijk ( Courtrai) with the VDAB ( Vlaamse Dienst Voor Arbeidsbemiddeling En Beroepsopleiding ); Rahere please note !!

Getting back to pizza ; my favourite story in the Readers Digest (many years ago) concerned the young American sailor on his first foreign trip ,going ashore in Naples . After a while he returned to his shipmates saying "Hey guys ! They do PIZZA here !!".

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: bubblyrat
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 07:20 AM

PS She Who Must Be Obeyed has just informed me that the Trebbiano that we liked was,in fact,Trebbiano D'Abruzzo , or something like that ; Ik weet het niet precis !

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 09:51 AM

Long Island, NY has a pizzaria every few miles down every main road you find... LOL the first Italians from the Naples area that settled in NYC sold pizza on the streets and roasted chestnuts on the street corners in winter. it is thin and chewy and usually just plain cheese. Later I knew a fellow from Rome who started up a place down the street from us and his calzones were tremendous, but his pizza had a crispy crust not to my taste.

He also made great "heros"... warm slender loaves filled with fresh ingredients... yum. The only place I ever had tender sliced potatoes scrambled up with eggs as a sandwich. Dad always sauted frying peppers and onions and then added the eggs... served in a hero roll... makes a great meal!

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Anne Lister
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 11:46 AM

Rahere, we had what was called flammenkuche on a couple of different occasions at restaurants in the Ardennes - this was a few years ago and we were meandering our way around. In each case what we had was a base whose closest relative would have been other forms of pastry, covered with various toppings but a lot of melted cheese. We were in France, so would have expected it to be called "tartiflette" if that's what it was, but it was called flammenkuche. I've since seen similar-looking items in Waitrose.
My husband loved it, by the way - I'm the fussy one when it comes to stodge! (He's very definite that it was a lighter choice than pizza, mind)

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 03:46 PM

Ah, the Ardennes is not Flanders, it's deepest, darkest Wallonia (and you don't get much deeper and darker than an area which still practiced Nestorianism a hundred years ago, 1200 years and more after it disappeared from the rest of Christendom). That far down, you're on the start of the Vosges, which runs right down into Alsace. You probably ahd a slightly heartier Belgian version.
The real Alsace one isn't stodgy, it's practically filo pastry with veg on.

We should make the local Ratgever a Mediator, then: he used to work in the Flemish mediation service. Ond, Vlaams is niet Nederlands!

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 08:16 AM

I've had good, bad and indifferent pizza throughout the UK.

However, I've never had decent khachapuri in the UK, which is a shame as I think good khachapuri (Georgian cheese bread.....that's the Georgia near Russia) is miles better than pizza!

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 10:21 AM

from Encylopedia Britannica:
Angle, member of a Germanic people, which, together with the Jutes, Saxons, and probably the Frisians, invaded the island of Britain in the 5th century ce. The Angles gave their name to England, as well as to the word Englisc, used even by Saxon writers to denote their vernacular tongue. The Angles are first mentioned by Tacitus (1st century ce) as worshippers of the deity Nerthus. According to the Venerable Bede in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, their Continental homeland was centred in Angulus, traditionally identified as the Angeln district in Schleswig between the Schlei inlet and the Flensburger Förde, which they appear to have abandoned at the time of their invasion of Britain. They settled in large numbers during the 5th and 6th centuries in what became the kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, and East and Middle Anglia.
And before them: Celt, also spelled Kelt, Latin Celta, plural Celtae, a member of an early Indo-European people who from the 2nd millennium bc to the 1st century bc spread over much of Europe. Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and northern Spain to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia and were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, and Celtiberians. Linguistically they survive in the modern Celtic speakers of Ireland, Highland Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Brittany.

So yeah, lets get rid of them foreigners... but which ones? At least Italians are noted for their cusine... LOL.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 10:39 AM

I responded to an idiotic post that has now been banished... sooo behind the times...

xenophobia never seems to go away... my own grandfather always insisted that he didn't like Italian cooking, despite his daughter having married an Italian... lol so one day mom made pasta cicci and didn't tell him what it was until he requested a second helping of that good stuff... he grumbled a bit, but never said another word about Italian food :)

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: GUEST,Dáithí
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 11:01 AM

Am rying to remember the first time i saw (or tasted) a pizza...and can't!
When did they first appear in the UK, anybody know?

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 11:21 AM

About early fifties, if I recall. There was an Italian restaurant called Dino's in Gloucester Road, corner of Stanhope Gardens, near where I lived in Harrington Gardens, opened about 1953 or 54. Had my first pizza there, but didn't think it anything special, either way. Still don't. If I have any fast food, I prefer a good burger. (I see from Googlemaps that there's still a restaurant just there, but now it's a Nando's, which I think is a chicken chain.)

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Musket
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 12:46 PM

Foreign muck eh? My Aunty married a Welshman. As a result, we all drink Glenghetti tea....

Lets not forget that when we say pizza, we mean a range of foods. The only common touch being a breadish base, hard or soft, and tomato base. After that, its difficult to say good, bad or indifferent. I worked in Italy for a while and crispy simple pizza was elegant and lovely. A thick takeaway deep pan isn't the same thing, although a good one can be good. Fiorentini and derivitives can be rather tasty.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: olddude
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 01:16 PM

Here is a better idea why don't you guys take back that prick gordon Ramsey and have him make pizza for you

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 03:09 PM

I've got fond memories of Pizza Margherita when I have been at Lancaster Maritime

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Musket
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 03:13 PM

Our gift to you was Ramsey. His obscene mouth goes with your obscene guns. Although I suggest some lemon to give an enhanced acidic note.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 03:23 PM

""The only common touch being a breadish base, hard or soft, and tomato base""

Among the best pizzas I have ever tasted, were those with no tomato, or tomato product, on them at all.

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: olddude
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 03:30 PM

Naw guns don't taste good with pizza ya need beer

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: olddude
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 03:47 PM

Try one with sun dried tomatoes amazing

Subject: RE: Pizza in Britain
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 04:17 PM

There used to be a pizzahouse in Mulhouse that I quite liked when I worked in Cernay. I was introduced to it by my host there one Patrique de Gourcuff. They did a crisp hard base with a quite spiky chilli topping. He was a bit of a one-up fellow whose friends included the de Turkheims and the de Barrotes.