Pizza Express? - not impressed! (Pizza Express)

Member Name: machar

Product:	Pizza Express
Date:	16/10/01 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good if you only like pizza, looks posh and trendy if that matters to you

Disadvantages: very limited menu, food isn't very good, too busy and crowded

I'm sorry but my one and only trip to Pizza Express left me distinctly unimpressed and I don't think I'll be back!

When my friends said about going out for an Italian meal I was very keen. I love pasta and creamy sauces that Italian meat always seems to come in. You can imagine my disappointment when they said we were going to Pizza Express. For a start the name conjured up visions of a fast food joint and not a nice intimate Italian restaurant as I had hoped for. However, several people told me it was really good and it was actually quite a swish place.

This was true as the décor was all chrome, minimalist, modern and spotlights. Quite impressive but a bit crowded as the tables were squashed in next to one another. It had the atmosphere of a busy canteen - that's the only way to describe it! My disappointment grew when I saw the menu. The restaurant truly lives up to its name giving you a choice of pizza or pizza - oh sorry and 3 salads if you are really desperate to avoid the pizza.

Th doughballs had been recommended to me so I thought I would give them a bash. As they only cost £1.75 I should have known it would have been basic but even I didn't think it would be quite this basic! It consisted of 6 small plain doughballs with no salad or garnish and a small bowl of extremely greasy very pungent garlic butter. Even though I sparingly applied the butter I still felt queasy by the end due to all the grease. My partners starter was as bad. He had taken the mozzarella and sundried tomato salad as he loves sundried tomatoes. He got ONE extremely small shrivelled specimen of tomato and that was it. The other fresh tomatoes in the salad looked distinctly green - definitely not ripe!

Moving on to the main course things didn't really improve for me. I had selected a Fiorentino (or something like that) pizza. The toppings consisted of spinach, olives, mozzarella and a fried egg. Interesting I thou
ght. I'm not a huge fan of olives so I asked or extra cheese instead of olives which was no problem. When my pizza arrived it did indeed have extra cheese but the burnt base distracted from the flavour somewhat! To be fair only half of the base was burnt but that was a half too much. It was quite nice despite this with lots of toppings and a thin base.

I still persevered and actually ordered a dessert. I had pear tart and ice cream but it was far from startling. It was obviously mass produced and had no individual attention to it at all with a slightly soggy base.

Probably the best thing about the entire place was the service. There were 14 of us and the staff coped marvellously making sure we all got our food at the same time and that we were never short of drinks.

I can honestly say that I will not be back in a Pizza Express. The menu is far too limited and the food wasn't really up to scratch. If I want an Italian meal I would much rather go to one of the many other Italian restaurants in Aberdeen. Sorry!

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