Paddington Lunch Box

Tag: Italian

  • Vapiano, Paddington

    Vapiano, Paddington

    A brief story about Vapiano, but first…ahhh don’t you love it when you arrive on the platform and your tube leaves…and the next one is in a mysterious amount of time that ends up being nearly 20 minutes. 🤬

    Another one of those commutes but at least ordering my lunch at Vapiano was blissfully simple. Order on an app, pay on the app and it turns up 10 minutes later. Super smooth and perfect for lunchtime.

    Menu at Vapiano

    The menu pretty much consists of pasta, pizza and salad – I went for the latter, and there is a lunchtime deal for just £9.95 on selected dishes. 😎

    I had the chicken Caesar salad…not an especially high amount of chicken, maybe a quarter of a chicken breast, but tons of kale, of course.

    Chicken Caesar salad, plenty of parmesan on top

    It actually worked well, the cheese, light dressing and the edible croutons made a good match. Would have loved more chicken but I guess that’s why they try to upsell on the app.

    Rating of 7.3 out of 10.

    I’d go back… colleagues eating pizza and gnocchi, respectively, seemed happy too.

    Wall with a sign "recipes are made to be broken" in a modern looking place
  • Bizarro

    Bizarro

    Yo yo Bizarro I was back in the corner of the office trying not to speak to anyone, enjoying the 56kb dial up modem WiFi that we are blessed with.

    And then I went for a bang average Italian at Bizarro near Paddington station.

    They had a million things on their menu as is common in restaurants with no specialities, so I mistakenly ordered from their specials menu.

    I could have had pizza, pasta, loads of different varieties of chicken or veal meals…but ended up going for chicken, peppers, ham and goats cheese special, thinking it might actually be special.

    Nope.

    Carrots and potatoes at the back, some heated up cheese on top of stuff at the front.

    To be fair, the grilled goats cheese actually was quite special, it had some depth to the flavour and a slightly crispy outside.

    Alas the ham was like sliced ham from a pack of 100 slices at Tesco, peppers and chicken were decent enough but it didn’t work well together as a dish. Why such basic ham?

    Average boiled vegetables to the side with slightly tough and dry potatoes, but edible. The tomato sauce was pleasant but nothing special. Nothing really was apart from the name of the corner of the menu I ordered from.

    Quick and friendly service, there was certainly a buzz about the place for 2pm on a Wednesday…if I run out of places to try then I might go back for pizza perhaps.

    Price came to about £19 I think.

    Rating of 6.2 out of 10.