Tag: pizza

January trudges on, cold, wet, dark – I’m not even sure that the sun rose on this particular office day.

But…pizza!

This week was a trip to Santa Maria for lunch, the Italian pizza place with the Spanish-sounding name. The only other pizza that I’ve had around here is from Bella Italia, so it didn’t have too much to beat.

Apparently Santa Maria’s pizza is award-winning, but also pretty sure every pizza place I’ve been to in London has won an award, probably even Domino’s in Hounslow has an award from someone.

I forgot to take a photo of the menu, but you can check it online. Though also I was sat opposite my boss and I don’t think he knows that I have a blog about how damn unproductive the office is and how stultifyingly energy-sapping the commute is. Photos of food is normal enough.

I went for the Santa Catarina pizza (all these Santa’s probably would have been appropriate the month before) – Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella Fiordilatte, Salame Napoli, Fresh Chilli &
Parmesan. Capital letters because I copied and pasted – and couldn’t be arsed trying to spell Fiordilatte.

Perhaps a bit too much un-covered crust, I’d have liked the sauce and cheese to cover more than zone’s 1 and 2 of the pizza, the chillies added some bite, the tomato sauce seemed fresh – the Salame Napoli (yeah copy pasted again) didn’t quite have the smoky or spicy nature of my preferred pepperoni on a pizza, but it was pleasing.

The base was thin, the dough quite pillowy – I liked the pizza and I suspect I’ll be back at some point. But you can get much better pizza in London. Maybe Santa Maria has the best pizza in Paddington? I don’t yet know of better.

And gosh did I get soaked on the way home.

Rating of 7.30 out of 10.

Also worth noting it was quite affordable – circa £17.00 for a pizza, soft drink and service.

Ahhh back to the office once again, but at least we get to collaborate in meetings together.

Unless your meeting room is cancelled by a piece of paper.

Yep someone put a piece of paper on the door of the meeting room we’d booked saying “room booked for **very important stuff** all day”. Which apparently over-rides electronically-managed bookings. Is this the 2000’s again?

Well it might as well be the 2000’s as I went to Bella Italia. Who knew they still existed?

Just in case you cannot remember your last visit to Bella Italia in 2002, they mostly serve pasta and pizza.

I’m not one normally to eschew pizza but also January…trying to be healthy…aaarrrgghh what to do?

Half a pizza with salad, of course.

Sure, it looks like a children’s meal, plus the salad because what kind of child eats salad?

The salad was pretty ordinary, though the cherry tomatoes were really fresh – nicer than the supermarket ones in January. A tiny bit of balsamic glaze…because it might still be 2002 outside.

Pizza seemed to be a more sourdough base, the tomato seemed more like supermarket tomato passata, the cheese I noticed more in terms of texture than flavour – the pepperoni a little crispy, but gorgeous.

It’s pretty hard to dislike a pepperoni pizza, and this was a decent effort. I kind of expected to scorn it, but actually I quite liked it.

Score of 6.9 out of 10 overall.

Next week, a visit to Jamie’s Italian. Maybe. And more meeting room bookings cancelled by a piece of paper on the door. Definitely.