a warm sunny evening had me off to meet up with the lovely nikki a. for some pizza, gossip, and free prosecco from pizza express. now, perhaps pizza express isn't the first place that comes to mind when thinking of where to go for a girly night out, but it was hard to resist since they had sent me a voucher for a bottle of free prosecco for my birthday :)
we'd booked a table outside, but decided that it was getting a bit breezy so the waiter happily showed us a table inside. although there was only two of us he sat us at a table for four which was nice since we had a bit of extra space. he almost promptly brought the prosecco over so we could have a drink while looking over the menu.
pizza express clearly does one thing well and that is pizza! we both went for the pandana leggera pizza, while i started with the mozarella and tomato salad and my dining partner had the dough balls. although we were initially told that it could be up to 30 minutes for food, our starters arrived fairly quickly. a mozarella and tomato salad is basic but i think what makes the pizza express version is their amazing pesto sauce drizzled around the side! i only wish there had been more of it!
pizzas arrived shortly after starters, so i assume the kitchen wasn't as slow as they predicted. although the leggere version is smaller than the typical version, i definitely didn't feel like i was missing out on anything! that pizza base was crisp and the goats cheese and carmalised onions made it delicious. i also felt sort of healthy with the salad in the middle of the pizza, although that may have been cancelled out by the polenta fries nikki and i shared. as a side note the polenta fries are awesome and sharing food means that calories don't count ;)
we finished up with the mini desserts, me opting for the brownie and a tea instead of the coffee. the brownie was incredibly good and indulgent but the perfect size as it was just big enough to really enjoy but small enough not to feel like i was overindulging.
the food was definitely good, but i also have to make a point of saying that the service was really excellent. our prosecco glasses never went empty (until sadly the bottle was finished), the wait staff was super attentive making sure that our food was brought out promptly and any extras were brought out as well. also our waiter had a bit of witty banter with us which made it for a very fun evening!
definitely enjoyed this pizza express and i know i'll be back :) read more