A taste of 1997: Pizza Express reviewed

As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world stage humming, said of Tony Blair: ‘He was the future once.’ So was David Cameron, and so was Pizza Express: I bet they meet often. It was founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot, who shipped a pizza oven from Naples and a chef from Sicily and opened in Wardour Street. That branch closed in 2020.

Boizot grew up in Peterborough but lived in continental Europe for a decade, and he learnt three things: an Italian restaurant must be bright; good pizza must be slightly charred (burning food is underrated); children need restaurants too. These changes were sensational, and Pizza Express was launched on the stock exchange in 1993. It outclassed Wimpy, made Pizza Hut look stupid – who eats pizza from Kansas? – and even now is better than Domino’s, which produces food I am afraid to touch. (Domino’s is my River Styx, plus Subway.) It was ambitious: I think the early design owed something to Corbin and King’s monochrome Le Caprice, but I may have imagined it.

In 2014 it was bought by Hony Capital, a China-based private equity firm. I’m not sure I want pizza brought by private equity: the pizzas (we know as of last week that Pompeii-ans made frescoes featuring pizzas, but without tomatoes, which are not native to Italy) got smaller. Even people eating pizza, which is a powerful anaesthetic and downer – which is why people give it to children – notice these things. Other restaurants imported pizza ovens and did what Pizza Express did, but better: Temper in Covent Garden, for instance. (You will have your own favourite. I pray it is not Domino’s.