Forum Topic

Pizza Express

I am delighted to see that the Chiswick branch is NOT listed as going to be closed! Love their pizzas!

Margot Crowther ● 2264d26 Comments

It is all very sad.All these job losses.On a tangent a big experiment that would never have been tried re working from home has let the Genie out the bottle.Schroeders have told all their workers basically dont worry about office working again...Places like Canary Wharf and Chiswick Business Park will be seen as monoliths from another age developers are stuffed...a woman on the radio said she saves £100 a week on fares that is a lot of spare money.Tube wont ever get its revenue back how will it survive without large fare increases etc etc...what a game changer

Mick Collins ● 2264d

Hi there Mick..You're new in town. So just in case nobody's said owt - welcome..Akchully that's just an excuse.  WhatI really wanted to say is I've bin enjoying your input. Something quite rare round this way.  So ta.Also gotta ask - do you have eastend roots?x

Stuart Kerr ● 2264d

Are you in the C.I.D Stuart?

Mick Collins ● 2264d

Just bantering Stuart brought up in Soho amazingly I realised recently my school is still there in Gt Windmill St ...and thanks for the welcome

Mick Collins ● 2264d

I gotta Prof Higgins mate in the CID and he told me you woz either an eastender or born and bred in Soho..xx

Stuart Kerr ● 2264d

Oh dear Stuart I know you know.....you know xx

Mick Collins ● 2264d

Nah!  Me, I'm like Baldrick - I  know nuffing.

Stuart Kerr ● 2264d

Nah Baldrick had a wicked sense of humour. I would watch out for Stuey boy as he may have a cunning plan along with his other turnip mates otherwise known as the forum wristers.

James Smith-Jones ● 2264d

Stuart is a clever guy like those typo errors in his first post, clever, too clever by half is Stuart but I wish him well, very well indeed infact.

Mick Collins ● 2263d

Don't trubble yerself Mick (not that you would) … the  geezer's only lookin' to be friendly..  He's like that...Anyways - we really should get back on track and say something nice to Margot the OP about Pizza Express...Talkin' of which, I just spent a pleasant half day at West Mid Hospital who are taking care of my wife's right foot.  Dead clever they are.  Pleasure to deal with.  Taxi there and back with tips about 45 quid.  Which is a £25 saving on a day-hire VW Golf Automatic.  Interesting to many  btw...Even more fascinating,  my neighbour Sean had an American hot with a large glass of Italian red in Pizza Express the other night and was well impressed.  Half price too.  And he knows a thing or two about Italian grub having dun stuff with well known film direktor Franco Zabaglione  ..Ow'm I doin' with the Soho meets Bow Bells lingo?  I could do dead posh if you prefer.  Or common as muck.  Or even straight down the throat filth  (suitably melted down in respect of the neighbours)..x

Stuart Kerr ● 2263d

I met Peter Boizet many years back...and he was POSH! Indeed he owned a football club nicknamed POSH.He was the founder of Pizza Express..and we met at his wonderful branch "Pizza on the Park" at Hyde Park Corner...a jazz venue too.Shame the Salad Nicoise and American Hot dishes have fallen from that latterday standard.

Jim Lawes ● 2263d

Likewise on a personal level Jim, I have happy memories of nights spent at Boizet's branch in our High Road.  We must have dined next to each other so many times back in the 80's.  One of the in-places as I remember.So much so that about 5 years back I had a flush of American Hot nostalgia and one night dragged the girls back there for dinner.  Bit of a heavyweight sludge-fuelled let down I'm sorry to say.  The problem was dough balls.  Yuk!  Everything we ordered came with a completely unwanted and horribly inedible pile of free, seriously nasty and quite tasteless dough balls.Bleedin' dough balls.  Everywhere!  Even worse than a week old limp tomato salad at a tourist dive in Marble Arch.  Soviet-style Chiswick stodge for the masses.Sure, we left every dollop of unwanted dough on the plates.  But they took up so much room there was nowhere left for the wine...Never bin back..

Stuart Kerr ● 2263d

If only places like The Chiswick Grill still existed

Mick Collins ● 2263d

SK > "Never bin back.."Pizza Express was a big favourite of ours. We must have eaten there most weeks in the late 80s/early 90s. Often the very last to leave as the staff had already put the chairs up on all the other tables.We continued to visit and enjoy it at a reduced frequency for the next twenty years or so. But the food started going downhill.The final straw was one evening a few years ago when I spotted mass-produced frozen pizza bases being brought out from the back.Like you... never bin back.

John Whitworth ● 2263d

It was the lack of that anchovy atop the Salad Nicoise that was am indicater  to me that Peter Boizet's (RIP) style was not being followed.Another favourite of mine was the one at Notting Hill branch staffed seemingly by retired Italian actors.I was sorry to see the sad site of the PE branch on the South Bank..opposite yhe Royal Festival Hall.Regarding the CHISWICK GRILL...check via the Forum Search Box for the great thread started by the much missed forumer Cllr Adrian Lee.

Jim Lawes ● 2263d

The only decent pizza in Chiswick nowadays is at Tarantella. The sort of decent dough that everyone else seems to want to make goes into their wallets.

Roger Talbot ● 2263d

As a single fellow, I was one of a crowd of singers and musicians in the late sixties which frequented the (then) wonderful Pizza Express in Coptic Street. I think it was one of the first Pizza Expresses in London - a former-dairy, with beautiful Victorian tiles. They regularly used to have a string quartet playing there in the evenings. I haven't been back for years, so as not to to spoil the memory. As for the Chiswick branch, I haven't eaten there for ages either. The standard of the food seems to be inversely proportional to the number of branches. Nostalgia's not what it used to be.

Robert Fish ● 2263d

https://images.app.goo.gl/QdaHnoDYsSmM9WW78Remembering Peter Boizet.

Jim Lawes ● 2263d

JL > "Remembering Peter Boizet."Or is it 'Boizot':"In June 1965 he joins Peter Boizot in setting up the first pizzeria in England in a tiny room in Wardour Street. The only two tables in this Pizza Parlour were constructed by ourselves utilising the metal bases of two "Singer" sewing machine topped up each with a panel of cheap wood, covered with adhesive red vinyl cloth. A large piece of marble and some old water pipes, salvaged from a nearby demolition place, gave us a solid working table. Plastic cutlery and paper cups did not eliminate the problem of washing up as Peter Boizot insisted in reutilising to the maximum those pioneering accessories.Peter Boizot’s dream was to create a chain of ‘Pizza Bars’ serving slices of pizzas on greaseproof paper, all over England. It took several months of solid insistence by Mario to persuade him to abandon his idea of serving only slices of Pizzas and start serving proper, round Neapolitan Pizzas."http://www.damario.co.uk/about-mario/4526627958

John Whitworth ● 2263d

Any news of the Woking branch?

Vivienne Cox ● 2263d

Just off Berkeley Square in Bruton Place, a lovely quiet backwater,there is a  Pizza Express.Maybe the cheapest sit down meal in Mayfair so I hope it has survived.

Adrian Irving ● 2263d

Sadly Bruton Place is to be closed but Woking branch is okay. The full list of closures was in the Evening Standard the other day.

Margot Crowther ● 2263d

Such a pity that the Pizza Express company was sold to a Chinese equity company in 2014.

Micki Hawkes ● 2262d

I understood only the Maidstone music venue was going to close.  It is the Soho one that we love but that one is so small I just can't imagine going there for a while.

Philippa Bond ● 2261d

Yup!Lots of  thanks to Margot for creatin' this thread.There's been so many nostalgia-fuelled threads about Chiswick's favourite old restaurants. But d'you know,  I'm not sure Pizza Express has ever got so much as a mench.And now here we are,  with quite a few pinging their memory buds and coming back with just how much time we spent in there enjoying ourselves.  OK this aint John Southey's or the Chiswick Grill but it sure does earns a statuette as somewhere many of us (the usual gang) spent many a great evening..Just sayin'

Stuart Kerr ● 2261d

Hear hear Stuart. A long overdue thread. As Robert Fish said earlier "nostalgia is not what it use to be" but if you have enjoyed magic moments in the past at some of the atmospheric branches..we must count ourselves lucky.We did it and got the T shirt!Anyone remember Kettners in Soho? ..another Peter Boizot styled venue.Maybe Robert's group performed at Pizza on the Park too! I recall an American pianist and singer....Steve Ross.Believe he's on YouTube. Magic evenings. Vivienne mentioned the Woking branch...that venue will live on with it's Royal connections no doubt.Thanks to John for Peter's surname correction..and for the PIZZA EXPRESS  history link.I passed by the the large Surbiton branch last night. Almost empty on a Friday evening! Oh dear indeed!

Jim Lawes ● 2261d