11:38am Tuesday 2nd March 2010
A £40 voucher, express delivery, proves the lure to a ‘unique, exclusive and specially-created’ experience.
WHOEVER it was who supposed there to be no such thing as a free lunch, a quotation sometimes ascribed to the American economist Milton Friedman but more safely Anon event, most certainly had a point.
It’s among the reasons that the column has almost never accepted buckshee meals, or hospitality of any sort. Apart from anything else, they’d have known you were coming – and if they’d known you were coming, they’d have baked a cake.
PizzaExpress was different, so sharp they overtook the puritanical streak. The PR people simply sent a £40 voucher, some information on new “guest chef” Francesco Mazzei and asked for nothing in return.
It was 6.30pm last Wednesday, weather woebegone, when we wandered up to the PizzaExpress at the end of Skinnergate, in Darlington, long since the Green Tree café of frothy coffee and affectionate memory.
The place was so full, we’d briefly to wait. An hour later, customers were advised there’d be a 30-minute delay. Was it simply to be a free-forall?
Had the whole town £40 vouchers in their pockets?
The queue is worth a thousand words – one singer, one throng – a PizzaExpression, as it were. It’s possible on a weary winter Wednesday in Darlington, as doubtless elsewhere, to walk past many restaurants where not a chair is occupied, save for a desperate waiter calling the Samaritans.
At this one there must have been 50 people at any time. Maybe 100, of all ages, passed cheerfully through in the two hours we were there.
A poster also announced that it was Orange Wednesday, which isn’t something which comes between Turquoise Tuesday and Purple Thursday but – said The Boss, who is upwardly mobile – a deal for customers or staff of that phone company.
“We won’t shush you when you’re talking,” the poster added, but there was no need. There was a gentle, convivial, agreeable buzz about the place. In most restaurants these days, the buzz is off.
PizzaExpress was founded by Peter Boizot, a Peterborough lad, in 1965. Francesco Mazzei was born eight years later, in southern Italy and now runs the much-praised L’Anima restaurant, in London.
Early in his career, says the PR stuff, he met PizzaExpress executive chef Anton Romani when he applied for a job – the latest move what the publicists call “a felicitous squaring of the circle”. The circle may still be slightly elliptical, however. By the look of Mazzei’s CV, he didn’t get it.
So now he lends his name, and his expertise, to the latest promotion – two starters, three pizzas and a pasta dish, all “unique”, “exclusive”, “specially- created” and with ingredients from back home. One pizza’s even rectangular, as his grandmother insisted they should be.
The Boss, it should be said, is so smitten by anything Italian – particularly if wearing a police uniform and jackboots – that she would happily consume the Rome telephone directory if served with garlic and olive oil.
The last meal we ate over there, in Milan last summer, was in a restaurant that appeared to double as a knocking shop and with food that also wanted a seeing to. PizzaExpress is both miles better and altogether more singular in its aspirations.
It’s open plan, the pizza makers – apparently they’re called pizzaioli, we used to have something of the sort beneath the bed – work away, kneads must, tossing the stuff from hand to hand like folk used to do before knitting. We couldn’t remember what it was called.
The kitchen brigade wear striped shirts and little white caps, like a chorus in HMS Pinafore. The waiters are efficient, attentive, good with kids.
We began with Franceso’s two starters, insalata semplice – “the classic Italian first-course salad” – and tricolore, designed with basil, guacamole, tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella to resemble the Italian national flag. Oregano and olive oil feature strongly.
She followed with a salad nicoise, loved it, wished there’d been more anchovies. I had Francesco’s thinbased Mia Sofia pizza, named after his two-year-old daughter on one account because of her love of mushrooms and on another because she loves truffles. Both are strongly present, anyway: Sofia, so good – and that’s two substantially vegetarian dishes in a row. We finished with an above par banoffi pie – nice ice cream – and with what might paradoxically be called a starter pudding (I forget what it was) and a double espresso.
The boss man put the voucher through a hand-held computer. “It mightn’t think it’s good,” he said, jocularly.
It was.
With a bottle of Peroni and a glass of red wine, the bill reached £48. The balance will be met by the accounts department, very substantially less than they are accustomed to having left on their plate after these little excursions.
Free enterprise, happy all round.
STILL with the Italian job, last week’s column on the Frenchthemed Rustique, in Richmond, wondered what had happened to Morris Pastorello, who’d previously had a restaurant in the same premises and who’d also run the Crown at nearby Brompton-on- Swale.
Sadly, Morris died almost three years ago – “far too soon,” says Pauline Peart, from Witton-le-Wear, whose children’s godfather the Italian was. His culinary skills notwithstanding, Morris was also famous – says Pauline – for making brilliant kites from plastic carrier bags. “They really did fly.”
BACK in October, Eric Dunnill emailed enthusiastically about the range of real ales – “knowing the pleasure you so obviously take from them” – at the Green Tree, in Howden-le-Wear, near Crook.
Since it was only 8.30pm when we left PizzaExpress, we headed northwards up the shrouded A68. Why is it that when the rest of the world may be virtually fog-free, the A68 round the back of Heighington resembles Dogger Bank in a peasouper?
It was bingo night, even Inter Milan v Chelsea playing serious second fiddle. Four and nine, Howden line. The landlord and his wife were somewhere in the South China Sea, former local councillor Dave Quinn left in charge.
“It’s the first time I’ve been in a pub for 11 hours and left sober,” he said.
The pub, like the ale, was well kept. They’d Steeltown from the Consett Brewery, Yardass from the Surtees at Ferryhill Station and Strongarm, ever-excellent, from Camerons. Sunday lunches, too.
Dave thought we might like a game of bingo. Eyes up, we declined.
The night had been exciting enough already.
EXACTLY 20 years ago we reported the opening, by Michael Barry of the BBC’s Food and Drink programme, of the Vujon restaurant near the Quayside in Newcastle. The building had had a £250,000 makeover.
“It’s not just another tandoori and chips and 40 pints of lager place,”
said Mr Barry, presciently. Since then it’s won lots of awards, voted the North’s hottest curries by the cricketers Gatting and Gower and has now had another £250,000 transformation to mark the milestone.
Vujon, incidentally, is Sanskrit for “gourmet dinner” – so what was Michael Barry’s favourite food? “A fried egg sandwich,” he said.
…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why sharks live in saltwater.
Because pepper makes them sneeze.
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