Pizza Express

restaurant review: pizza express, southend-on-sea - BigSpud

Pizza Express Southend has had a makeover.

A short hop on the train from Benfleet as a teenager meant the cinema, cool shops and places to hang out.

With the cinema came a new parade of bars and restaurants including a Pizza Express in 1996 – a first for the area.

Twenty years later in 2016, the Pizza Express has been renovated.

With sides of calamari, polenta chips and olives, followed by the honey cream slice, ice creams and sorbets we left with very full tummies, and boxes of leftovers ready for a midnight snack.

Reys, restaurant review: This posh chicken shop is the long-awaited ...

So why have I made the trip to Cambridge for lunch in this particular posh chicken shop?

Behind the open kitchen, ranks of chickens rotate soundlessly and smell-lessly on spits.

Unlike Soho House's Chicken Shop group, which offers just rotisserie chicken and a handful of sides (at slightly lower prices), Reys' menu is a smash-and-grab of deep-fried wings, nasty open sandwiches, pulled-chicken buns and some Asian-inflected sides.

Deep-fried wings – disagreeable mouthfuls of fat, bone and batter –rapidly surrender their crispness to this one-note salsa; it masks any other flavour in a pulled chicken bun, and is slathered over – the horror – deep-fried battered sprouts, a dish which prompts my friend to hiss "who ordered the testicles?"

If they'd stuck to doing rotisserie chicken brilliantly, with a few solid sides, I could see it succeeding as a modern, slightly more upmarket rival to Nando's.

Reys, Cambridge: restaurant review - olive magazine

A witty reference to ‘renard/reynard’ (French and old English for ‘fox’), Reys is a well-conceived, quality chicken restaurant that has the all-important basics of how to cook chicken down to an art.

Its less-is-more menu offers two ways to tailor your bird: classic French with Parisian-style gravy, or dressed with a sweet, gingery barbecue sauce.

He researched chicken breeds and cooking methods for six months with them before opening the restaurant as founder, under Pizza Express’s ownership.

The chooks are then seasoned and marinated for 12-24 hours before they make it to the rotisserie at the centre of the restaurant, where rotations of whole chickens on long spits slow-cook over open flame, browning and dripping with juices.

Don’t miss the crispy fried chicken wings in barbecue sauce (starter £5.50, side £3.50).

Restaurant Review: New Summer Menu at Pizza Express (The ...

It is a busy branch located close to Trafalgar Square so full of tourists as well as “yocals” but a fast turnaround with GLUTEN FREE options.

This includes their new Risotto Fresco, described on the menu as “Oak-roasted peppered salmon fillet, garlic and parsley in a creamy white wine risotto.

I would say the real food compares well with the “picture” which features on their Spring Collection marketing all around the restaurant and on the tables.

It is good to visit Pizza Express and not have a pizza (even if it is GLUTEN FREE: April 2014 Pizza Express Review and November 2013 Review) they now offer a risotto option that’s GLUTEN FREE.

I hope other “flavours” and more risotto dishes make it to their Summer Collection menu?!

review of London pizza restaurant Santa Maria by Andy Hayler in ...

Santa Maria opened in February 2010, and along with the original Franco Manca in Brixton market it redefined pizza in London.

Before Santa Maria London had progressed through the chain offerings of Pizza Hut and its rivals, with Pizza Express seeming the height of sophistication.

Santa Maria brought Naples style pizza to the capital in a serious way, educating the locals that a pizza base could be pliable and not rock hard.

The other was Santa Caterina (£8.95), whose toppings were mozzarella, tomato sauce, Naples salami, chilli and Parmesan.

According to the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletano, a pizza guild based in Naples that sets down rules for what constitutes an authentic Naples pizza, the ideal temperature should be 485C, but various accredited pizzerias have ovens that are a little less (or occassionally a little more) than this target.

Jazz Club | PizzaExpress Live

Enjoy great pizza at an internationally acclaimed London music venue In 2015 and 2016, the PizzaExpress Jazz Club was named 'Venue of the Year' in the London Lifestyle Awards.

It has previously won Time Out and Parliamentary Jazz Awards, and was named by Downbeat magazine as one of the world's great jazz clubs.