I was fancying pizza for lunch so I headed to Franco Manca. I have had pizza from here before, but have not written about it.
I went with their £10 lunch deal of a pizza and a soft drink.
You can choose from five pizzas and I went with the sourdough pizza with roasted cured ham, mozzarella, ricotta & wild mushrooms. The menu states that this comes with little tomato. This is more a white pizza.
The place wasn’t busy, so my pizza arrived very quickly.
It was a really nice pizza, I liked the mushrooms. It was a much better pizza than on my previous visit, but that time I had also enjoyed the pizza.
Met up with some friends at The Stable Game Room for a coffee and a bite to eat (oh and to play a game).
The Stable Game Room has many board games you can play, as well as serving food, alcoholic drinks and coffee.
I had an espresso, which was a little harsh to be honest, so much so I had to add sugar and I generally never do that to coffee. However when I was in Italy in the 1990s I would see quite a few Italians do that, so still felt I was being honest with myself.
I wasn’t that hungry, so I had the Cheese Deli Board, expecting to share it with the table.
The board was quite plentiful with cheddar, red Leicester, stilton and brie. Alongside was apples, grapes, pickle, pickled onions and cornichons. With this came bread and crackers.
I had to ask for butter though. It was a big board and there was lots of cheese. I have to say though, the cheese was nothing to write home about, the sort of cheese you could find in any supermarket. The cheddar was quite bland in comparison to the mature cheddar I usually have. Nice to have some stilton with the dish.
For a little more money you can have a cheese and ham board. Not sure if this means the same amount of cheese and then ham, or less cheese and some ham!
Our table also had a couple of pizzas. They have a pizza oven and used fresh dough, so the pizza looked excellent and according to those that ate them, they were delicious.
I was staying at the Doubletree Hilton in Ealing and was eating in the hotel restaurant.
I was a little hesitant in ordering a pizza, as it was a hotel not a pizza place. I went for the Garden Club pizza which came with mozzarella, courgette, red onion, mixed peppers on a tomato base.
Well my hesitation was well founded, it was just okay, but I think they had used a pre-cooked base, rather than making it fresh. I wasn’t too surprised by that. I was a little surprised that the tomato base was tomato puree and not passata or other kind of tomato sauce. This I wasn’t too impressed with. The toppings were nice and fresh though.
I certainly wouldn’t order it again. Compared to some of the other food I had at the hotel, this was a disappointing dish. I had had some really nice food on other nights.
I often use the Schär gluten free pizza bases quite often to make pizza.
The process I use is to take the Schär base. This is then topped with tomato. I personally prefer to use passata or other tomato base on my pizza, but my daughter prefers that I use tomato puree. On top of this I use a mix of grated cheese, usually mozzarella and cheddar.
Toppings vary and depend on what we have in the fridge. On this occasion I used salami, pepper, onion, and mushrooms. I usually pre-cook the mushrooms with some garlic butter.
The pizza is then cooked in a hot oven for about ten minutes, until the cheese is cooked and browned.
I was staying in Wimbledon at the Hotel du Vin and had dinner a couple of times in their Italian themed restaurant. I had a nice starter of Ministrone Soup. I even surprised myself and went for a pizza for my main course, the Porchetta Bianca Pizza.
This was a white pizza topped with slow roasted pork belly with rosemary, mozzarella, mascarpone, white truffle oil and pecorino.
The base was really nice, as this was a white pizza there was no tomato on the base. There was ample toppings, and I did like the flavour of the pork belly, which contrasted well with the mascarpone cheese.
This was an excellent pizza, I would have liked more truffle oil though.
Alongside my Pizza I went with the Zucchini Fritti, which was thin strips (or shoestrings) of courgette deep fried. They were rather moreish.
Rushing about meant I didn’t have time to cook anything special for dinner. So I popped a shop pizza in the oven. I had a Specially Selected Wood Fired Italian Ham, Portobello Mushroom & Mascarpone Pizza from Aldi. It had a great doughy base, good proportion of toppings and some nice flavours. I have had this pizza before and I would have it again.
Should note I did add some extra salami slices and olives to the pizza.
I have had the Salsiccia Broccoli Pizza before, which apart from the chilli I had enjoyed. On a visit to Bella Italia for my birthday back in April I decided to have the pizza again. The Salsiccia Broccoli Pizza comes with basilicata sausage, tenderstem broccoli, red chilli & garlic topped with mozzarella and pecorino cheese on a creamy mascarpone base with a drizzle of balsamic glaze.
I did enjoy the white base, and toppings. I did this time remove most of the chillis.
Last November went out in the evening to Cabot Circus, with a plan to do some shopping and have some pizza at Pizza Express.
I had tried to book a table online at Pizza Express, but the system was saying no availability. So when we arrived at Cabot Circus, I went in person to book a table.
We then went off and did some shopping.
We went to Pizza Express early, but they had a table. We sat down and looked over the menu. For a starter we ordered gluten free dough balls.
For my main course I went with the Mushroom & Truffle Romana Pizza.
Mushroom lovers, this one’s for you. Mixed mushrooms, béchamel, mozzarella, Gran Milano cheese, garlic, rosemary, a generous splash of truffle oil, parsley and a double pinch of black pepper come together in an indulgent vegetarian delight on a Romana base.
Took their time to bring us our main courses. We think our order actually got lost and had to be done again.
When my pizza (finally) arrived, it looked great.
I did enjoy the pizza, the white base was tasty and there was a lot of mushrooms on the pizza. I enjoyed the truffle oil. I think if I was making this for myself I would use a variety of mushrooms for flavour and texture.
I did enjoy the pizza, I think the service could have been better though.
At the beginning of May we went out for a birthday meal. Having had a nice meal at Zizzi in April we decided to visit them again. We once more sat outside, the weather was better in May than it was in April.
We had booked our table and though we had to wait for a while, well we had arrived early, but we were then shown to our table. I looked over the menu, and thought about what I would have.
I am never sure if I like the concept of the calzone or not. I have ordered them over the years, sometimes they have been great and other times not so much. This time I decided that I would go down the calzone route. There were a couple of choices on the menu, but I went for the Calzone Pollo Spinaci. This was a calzone stuffed with roasted chicken, speck, spinach & mushrooms, in a creamy mozzarella & Bechamel sauce, topped with coppa ham.
The food took a little time to arrive, but I was quite impressed with the presentation and size of the calzone.
I am not so sure this was a pizza, with the creamy filling it felt a bit large a really large pasty, but made with bread rather than pastry. Having said that, I did like the filling. I quite like mushrooms and spinach, and the creamy sauce was really nice.
The coppa ham on top seemed to be an afterthought, and it didn’t add too much to the dish in my opinion, but it did make the calzone look nicer.
