Pizza Express - Cheltenham

Friday 14th November 2008

This is a Crackerjack review of Pizza Express. Do you agree? Rate and review this venue.

Food and drink: 7 / 10.
Service: 10 / 10.
Atmosphere: 9 / 10.
Value for money: 8 / 10.

Personally, I never have that problem when I go to Pizza Express – the shall-I-have-salad, shall-I-have-pizza dilemma. I have both. But then I am greedy.

Clearly, some people are far more abstemious, so the Italian chain has come up with the perfect solution for the well-behaved: the leggera.

If you thought everything that could be done with pizza had already been done, think again.

This is a whole new concept: a ring of pizza, the hole in the middle filled with a dressed salad.

If you’re hungry enough to eat a horse, this probably isn’t the main course for you.

But because each one is just 500 calories, those clever chaps at Pizza Express can guarantee there’ll be plenty of takers this summer.

We tried the new menu at the Cheltenham branch of the chain, a beautiful Regency building, opposite the Town Hall, with sweeping staircases and intricate plasterwork.

There’s a huge entrance hall next to the open kitchen, where you wait to be seated, and two dining areas.

The basement tables spill out into the garden, perfect for summer nights. The other bit, upstairs, is cosier with huge gilt mirrors and a wooden floor.

We started with a glass of Montepulciano (£5.40), bottle of Peroni (£5.95) and some rustica tomatoes (£2.05), gorgeous ruby-coloured jewels, roasted and marinated with thyme and olive oil.

The new leggera menu – Italian for light – includes starters of insalta verde and crostini, but we plumped for bruschetta (£4.10) and bruschetta con funghi (£4.30) from the old menu.

The bruschetta was very good, piled high with ripe tomatoes, punchy red onions and a generous dollop of homemade pesto.

The bruschetta con funghi was less exciting: portobello mushrooms in an under-seasoned bechamel sauce which failed, through its blandness, to hit the spot.

Next up was the main course. There are three leggera pizzas: the margherita (£7.95), vitabella (£8.40) with aspargus, chargrilled vegetables, peppers and oregano, and the gustosa.

We decided on the gustosa (£8.90) and an Etna Romana (£9.65) with a mixed side salad (£3.15).

The Etna was a triumph. Scorching hot Calabrian salami, sweet roquito peppers with a fierce kick and smoked speck ham, all on a wafer-thin Romana base.

It was ferociously hot, the bold flavours singing out. Perfect.

But what of the leggera? Well I couldn’t help feeling a bit short-changed with the not-quite-a-pizza, not-quite-a-salad concept.

It’s nothing to do with the ingredients – the hand-torn prosciutto, fragrant thyme, creamy fior di latte mozzarella, earthy portobello mushrooms and sweet yellow peppers were all tremendous.

It’s nothing to do with the base either – it was as light and as doughy as ever.

It’s just that it all stopped too soon – to make way for the hole, a handful of mixed salad leaves and cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of light dressing.

It seemed quite a lot of money to me, for not quite a whole pizza. But as I say, there will be plenty less greedy than I who will welcome it.

What it does mean, though, is that there’s room for pudding. We shared a deliciously boozy tiramisu (£4.55), but could have gone for one of the new gelato or dolcetti, tiny portions of pudding served with a coffee.

With another beer and a couple more glasses of wine, the bill was more than £60.

Pizza Express has put up its prices again since Christmas. Not by much – 35p on a glass of wine, 20p on some of the starters, a few pennies on the pizzas.

But it’s enough to have catapulted it into a different eating out bracket.

Where it used to be a great-food-at-reasonable prices sort of joint, the sort of place you could go after work or before a night on the town, it’s in a different league now if you want more than one course and you’re not driving.

That said, its website is full of offers – £10 for a pizza and glass of wine midweek and they’ve teamed up with Orange Wednesdays to offer cinema-goers two-for-one main courses – so if you’re savvy, you can still eat for less than £30 for two.

Of course Pizza Express has to make money, but if it’s not careful in these credit-crunching times, its loyal following might just start voting with their feet.

Tanya Gledhill

This is a Crackerjack review of Pizza Express. Do you agree? Rate and review this venue.