From Donuts to Delirium

I wonder if it’s a universal fact that Americans living in the UK crave pizza… good pizza. It just doesn’t exist here. It’s funny, because the truth is that you can pretty much find everything in London. If you go to Harrods you can buy anything from toothbrushes made of pure gold to a £15,000 brick of tea from Yunnan.  As for great things to eat, despite what you may have heard, awesome food is plentiful here, and the diversity of choices is mind boggling. London is such a melting pot of cultures and know-how, that someone somewhere can make you exactly what you want, no matter how outlandish… but for some reason, simple good pizza is just not one of those things.

With all the talk circulating in the blogosphere about the great pizza at Pizza East, I was curious.  The sad truth is that UK pizza pretty much sucks.  It is the home of the wussy pizza, pizzas which you are more likely to eat with a knife and fork rather than the kind that you pick up with your hands and eat by the slice.

As a restaurant, I love Pizza East. It has an industrial/ warehousey feel. The space is just grungy gorgeousness with exposed brickwork, touches of leather and concrete, and the distressed wood flooring. The spacious restaurant is full of light and is packed with the young and trendy. The atmosphere fun and buzzy. It is a great space to meet up with friends or to have in informal birthday party.

Of course I was there with my best friend, the ever glamorous Mr P. After sitting down, we ordered three starters, and all of them were pretty excellent. We had some very fresh and plump marinated green olives with Marcona almonds. The olives were mild and exceptionally juicy. Like your favourite housewife, these were very young, firm, and delicious, not like something that’s been sitting in brine (or Botox) for ages and ages. You know, come to think of it, I think these were the best olives I’ve ever eaten, and believe me, I’ve had my share. They really were  something special.

Along with the olives we had a tiny dish of baked aubergine (eggplant) and mozzarella with pesto in a tomato sauce. Nothing earth shattering, but definitely very good. It was simple, tasty dish with a  luxurious  texture. I’d order it again.

Perfect for mopping up some of that tomato sauce was some amazing, not to be missed garlic bread. Yes, this garlic bread was the business, or to use the British colloquial, it was the “dog’s bullocks” (yeah, don’t ask me to explain that one, it won’t be nice). That garlic bread was freaking awesome, the best  I’ve had in an Italian restaurant outside of America. It was pungent, crusty, and actually, pretty damned oily, but without loosing its crusty texture. Oily and buttery. Some people might not like the idea of oily bread, but I say bring it on! A girl has got to maintain a youthful complexion and olive oil is almost a natural beauty essential (hmmm… okay, maybe not the butter too, but come on, what’s better than being happy, greasy and full of carbs, I ask you?). The top was strongly flavoured with a chili flakes and sea salt. It made my mouth tingle . I needed more, so of course Mr P had to get me another helping and pretend it was for him. This is why I got married daaaaaaaahlings, for second helpings. Tell me my fellow readers, did you do the same?

Oily goodness awaits, along with some garlic, parsley and some melting butter for good measure. Yeah, you see that oil slick on the wooden presentation board? That means it’s goooooooood.

But let’s get to the pizza…

Mr P ordered a very photogenic pizza of courgettes (zucchini), tomato, taleggio and  marjoram, and I got  the potato, puzzone (a type of cheese) and garlic one. Mr P’s pizza was definitely tasty, but we both felt that mine was a lot more flavourful and the better of the two.

Looking at the picture of my pizza, I think that they should have used larger but thinner slices of potato, both for  presentation and structural integrity. Looks are a bit deceiving here. It may look a bit bland, but it was really good.

And now, for the wussy test:  what happens with a Pizza East pizza when you pick it up and eat it by the slice? Well ask Mr P’s shirt… the one Moi has to wash. Although the pizza base was both wonderfully fragrant and crackly, with a thick dusting of semolina on the under side, the crust is just not really equipped to carry toppings. The pizzas were not heavily dressed by any means, but what topping there was overpowered the  especially thin crust, causing the inside points to become soggy and droop.   Despite the billowy outer crust, the “pie” area was overly delicate. After several minutes of sitting on the plate, the slice gets a bit saggy. Saggy enough to impart the juicy red tomato sauce on your husband’s shirt and straight into the washing machine. Sadly, that to me, makes it a knife and fork pizza. That being said, the pizzas here are the best ones I’ve had in the UK up until this point.

Okay, ready for desert? Mr P got a rhubarb cheesecake. I’m not going to mince my words when I tell you that I thought it absolutely sucked. If I ordered this, I think I would have cried. Does this even look like a cheesecake to you?

Believe it or not,  despite its dog food appearance, Mr P liked it. I am just SO not into deconstructed crap like this. Deconstructed is just another way of saying, “hey,  your cheesecake fell on the floor and then we mashed it all up and scooped into a stupid shape and put it on your plate. That will be £6 please.”

My desert was much better: donuts!!!!!!!!!! As the name of my blog suggests, I am an absolute donut fiend.I have never seen donuts on the menu in a UK restaurant before, so I was really looking forward to these. They were very nice. Warm and very airy and covered in cinnamon sugar, these little lovelies came with a pot of  Valrhona chocolate for dunking.  After I finished dunking all my donuts, I ate the rest of the chocolate with a spoon like it was chocolate pudding, cause I’m naughty. I enjoyed it very much, but in all honesty, Krispy Kremes (aka “housewife crack”) they were not.

… All was washed down with my favorite kind of tea, English Breakfast, and some cute little pistachio biscotti:

To those uninitiated to the pizza nirvana of a truly awesome  NY style pizza, I think you would find the pizza here amazing. To those of us who know better, the pizzas at Pizza East would only rate as “good.” Add in some of that garlic bread, yummy olives, and some of those warm donuts and combine it with a fabulous and fun environment, and you’ve got a restaurant I’d be happy to go back to. Just stay away from that “cheesecake.”