PIZZA EXPRESS

We went to Pizza Express yesterday for a meal; we had a discount voucher.

It was absolutely wonderful, best night out I have had in ages. Food was so-so, the pizzas cooled quickly and to be honest weren’t much like real pizzas that you get in Italy but the wine was nice and the figs with mascarpone was delicious. What made the evening special however was that we were allocated a table right next to the open-plan kitchen, where you could watch them making the pizzas.

There were four of them; a dough-maker; a pizza-maker who scattered all the ingredients onto the pizza base; an oven-man, who pushed the pizzas into the hot ovens [three of them] and pulled them out again when they were ready and a sort of chef, who did everything else; starters; side-dishes; my figs, or scattered rocket on the hot pizzas. What a team they were; they swapped jobs after an hour then swapped again an hour later. And they worked at such a pace. This was a busy Friday night at 8.00pm and I should imagine life in a pizza kitchen doesn’t get more hectic than this. The oven-man just never took his eyes off the ovens; full-time one-hundred percent commitment. That is a big ask in any trade, for an hour.

About eight waitresses and I didn’t count them but probably a hundred and fifty maybe a hundred and eighty covers? It was ceaseless, non-stop 21C pressure. All with a smile. Just brilliant.

Can I just add that as an exercise in how to make money it was incredible. Five pizzas a minute? Something of that order; maybe every two minutes, but not more. The cheapest pizza on the menu was £9.00 each, so fifty-quid every two minutes for say four hours? Okay it isn’t like that every day, even on a Friday but it is still seriously impressive.