Red Pepper is the Queen of Little Venice eateries, by a long shot. It's been here for quite some time now, as far as I can remember; appearing out of nowhere, sometime during my teens, and this, coinciding with that particular era, holds many a memory for me (both good and bad), ones which are firmly embedded somewhere deep within the thorny hedgerows of Maida Vale's memory lane. When I happen to pass it nowadays (which is not very often, but still), it all comes flooding back to me, sentimentally secular chunks of my life, certain stages, reeled out in front of me, like a montage of memoried moments. It's weird how places (and music) can do that to a person. I remember when it opened, I think around the early 90's, and I definitely remember each and every meal I had there, that's for sure. It's what Little Venice had been gasping for, for absolutely ages. A high quality, cosy, local eatery, that wasn't too posh, wasn't too complicated, wasn't too intimidating or stuffy and that served wine by the bucket load (you have to bear in mind that Little Venetians are supposed to be sophisticated yeah?). The fact that it is situated on Formosa Street, really adds to it's appeal and amplifies it's cosiness ten fold. Formosa St is a snippet of a cut-through street, Warrington Crescent's tributary, trickling off the edge of Little Venice; a relic of a road that is basically frozen in time, Victorian time that is; you can literally smell the history in the air there. It's a quiet side street, and this enables the restaurant to cater for those who want to dine outside. I think there are at least two tables out at the front, under the canopy. I haven't been there for years, so I can only comment on how it used to be; but it looks pretty much the same as when I pass it now, so I'm not quite sure what the food is like nowadays; but having said that, I have had the odd pizza from there, taken-away, perhaps three or four spread out during the last few years or so, and one thing that I certainly did notice, which was quite obviously apparent, was the reduction in size of the actual pizzas. The most recent ones I have had, seem to have been pruned down to around the 8"/9" mark, whereas I am pretty sure they used to radiate out to the 11"/12" mark, but don't take my word for it. However, there was certainly no reduction in quality; but having said that, the latest creation I had the pleasure of wolfing down in about minute or so, the 'Pizza Crudo' (Fior de Latte (Mozarella cheese), San Danielle Ham, Rocket), resembled that of your typical Garlic bread, with regards to portion size, and fell seriously short of the mark when dealing with the diameter department. I also sensed a little bit of arty-farty nouvelle cuisininess creeping out of the box, when eating this Pizza Crudo, as there was an obvious attempt of a flamboyant, theatrical, decorative display-of-a-drizzle on show, which resulted in the curator's pathetic display of pretentiousness, resembling what can quite easily be described as the map of the River Thames. The theme is Italian. Very Italian. An Italian pizzeria, with the focus on the actual Italian part. This was a cunning trick. Even Baldrick couldn't see this one coming. He fooled everyone; the owner that is. He's actually my neighbour, and he's not even Italian. Nor is his accomplice, the lady that used to serve us back in the day when it first opened. These guys are Moroccans. You could've fooled me. I swear they used to greet us by saying Ciao and stuff like that. Hahahaha. I wonder what Ciao is in Moroccan. I only found out about it one night back in 1999 when I was hanging out with my brother and this dude on Clifton Road. The dude was a receptionist at the Collonade hotel and he knew the ins and outs of absolutely everything in the neighbourhood. He told us everything. Apparently the owner also owned the 'Green Olive' (I think this now changed into 'Kateh', run by the Persian lady who was his partner in Red Pepper?), which was another local restaurant in the neigbourhood, along with a bunch of other ones too. Whatever the case, they played the Italian card so well that they managed to dupe the lot of us!!! But apart from that, I remember the pizzas being absolutely delicious. They were cooked the authentic way, in a stone wood-fired oven, which at the time was a bit of a novelty. Nowadays, Basilico and the likes use the same technique, and deliver to your door, but back then, those kind of delivery companies didn't exist, I don't think. There's a ground level section with a big window, and a downstairs basement section. Downstairs you get the full view of the wood-fire oven (wonderful during the wintertime), and it's more private down there too; you can indulge in more heated conversations than you can do upstairs. Upstairs has the benefit of the front aspect window-view though, so perhaps up there is better suited to lunchtime-dining (whatever the case, this place is always full, so it's not like you read more
