Avoid this place! I visited this restaurant on the eve of 15 March. I did have a look through the window earlier in the day to check it out but it was closed and there were no menus displayed on the windows to view. When I arrived we sat in the lounge area for about 40 mins, having a drink, it was pleasant enough, but the tangerine décor can be a little overbearing and is a bit passé. Usually when I have not previously eaten in an establishment I will always take the safe bet and order something simple, simply to try and assess the standard of the food and avoid any misshaps. In this case it was pizza, easy enough you may think. I always raise my eyebrow when I see pineapple as an ingreidient on pizza, I know some people like it but they are usually the age of 5. There were also a number of other unusual combination of ingredients throughtout the pizza menu. No fish pizza at all, no mention of anchovy, caper, I may be mistaken but no or little mention of black olives. The choice was narrowing. I was foarced in to a corner and decided to have, cannot remember the restaurants name for it, but the ham, tom, onion and mushroom one, not my usual choice, safe maybe and one which you would think easy to create/ prepare. At this point I will mention that I have a bench mark to assess pizza and I use an Express pizza chain, a standard run of the mill chain similar pricing as SP which you are guarantee for consistency presentastion pricing and a good range of flavours and ingredients. I could also compare it against my own cooking skills but that frankly would just be too unfair. The pizza arrived promptly but I was overwhelmed with disappointment and anger. Disappointment that for such a simple pizza if failed in so many araeas, visually it was uninteresting, a handful of ingredients plonked un loving on an anemic crips thin base. I could clearly see that the toppings were bearly cooked through, thoughs of the 'conveyor cooking' style the manager mentions in response to another poor review. I was fascinated at the pile of thick bright pink lumps of meat, ham? really looked like cheap hacks of gammon. I could not see any cheese there was none covering the topping. There was no aesthetic consideration whatsoever in the asembly. I was angry because it p's me off so much that establishments feel that it is acceptable due to their lack of consideration and poor standards or just their ignorance to present such poor quality food. Now normally I would have sent this sorry attempt straight back to where it belonged, and not bothered to order anything else. However,having a differcult conversation with my fellow dinner, it would have put them in an uncomfortable position to eat on their own. What lay on the plate lacked any alure and it was an arm twisting exercise at every bite. It was cold, well bearly warm, the thin anemic base was soggy and under cooked its sad complection attempting to be masked with a pinkish colourant of what I assume was supposed to be the tomatoe base, was just a wash of colour, no flavour no texture . The mushrooms were piled, they were dry and looked past their best, next to them were the chopped toms, in all honesty I had switch my senses off simply to enable me to get through this lot, they were chopped, pale in colour, not red, not succulent full of sunshine goodness, just pale, tasteless and full of water, with a tinge of scorching. There was a pile of onion, this was a limp affair and addeded nothing of flavour. The HAM. I am cautious when I see meat and do not reconise it and considering recent events,..however, I have eaten many a variety of animals. This was pink, it was large lumps 2-3 inches long and some times of an inch thick. I am sure that it did come from a pig but where and when? It simply looked suspect. It bore no resemblance to what I consider to be ham, It was hard work to eat, chewy, sinuous and salty, it was left. The overall mouthful of combinations were a mildly warm sensation of soggy undercooked base. It was a painful endurance, There was no cheese or it could not be tasted or seen, there was no distinct flavour or seasoning ,blandness and continuous chewing when eating the ham. The overal experience here was extremly poor and in comparison to other similar restaurants in the area it sits firmly at the bottom in my opinion Don't waste your time on this place drive on down to the Toon and visit a pizza chain or go back up to the High Street for a take away. Oh and the bench mark score..1/10 for putting something on a plate. read more
