SORRY/A MASTERPOST OF AMAZING PIZZAS

I am literally terrible and haven't posted anything for about two months. I am very sorry to the one avid reader of this blog (Hector Craft) for my transgressions. But now I am back with good news - first of all, the restinpizza zine is still on its way. We have experienced some delays in the process (i.e. me being incredibly lazy) but things are getting back on track and we're hoping that it'll be with you by the beginning of December. We're also working on doing a launch night at a venue in London which will hopefully be super dope and involve bands and free pizza.

The second bit of good news is, despite my absence, I have still been eating pizza! (How could I not though rly, I think at this point I would probably get withdrawal if I stopped) And I am here to provide you with a masterpost of all of those pizzas, including pictures to make you really really really hungry. Get excited.

1) Pizza Paco, Barcelona

We went on holz to Barcelona in September and this was the only pizza we ate because we couldn't find any anywhere else :( know that this pizza probably looks hella plain, but sometimes simplicity is best (also none of the other pizzas were vegan lol) - this pizza was a v pleasing experience, was topped with oregano and some chopped garlic and had a really crunchy crust. Big up Pizza Paco. 

Pizza rating: 7/10

2) Basilico, London 

We ate this pizza the day we came back from Barcelona. Basilico pizzas are really really nice, and have the cheesiest vegan cheese I have had yet. I was very into it. I am a thin crust lady, and this ticked all my dough-related boxes, and the sauce was really great, although it did get a lil overpowered by the cheese at points. Basilico do two different vegan pizzas, and one is a vegan margherita to which there's an option to add toppings so you can basically design yr own pizza. AND the garlic bread (below) is vegan! AND they deliver! AND they do hella big pizzas like 15 inches or something which I haven't had yet but someday will. Maybe I will buy one and wear it as an ostentatious pizza ruff, like in Elizabethan times but edible and delicious. I don't know what I am talking about either. 

Pizza rating: 9/10 (that cheese!)

3) Papa John's, Oxford

I have written before about my warm feelings for Papa John's pizza - it is really stodgy and satisfying and unlike Domino's they don't include like milk or whatever the fuck else in their pizza bases so well done to them. Sadly they don't do vegan cheese, and we were too lazy to put any on, but this pizza was still very tasty and it did its comfort food job very nicely. 

Pizza rating - 8/10

4) Gallery Café, London

I just wanna take a sec to profess my love for Gallery in general. It's an all vegetarian/mostly vegan cafe in Bethnal Green and it is so amazing. Their food is always so impressive, and they do breakfasts, cakes, sandwiches - basically everything you could ever want. They also have theme nights (they do a chip shop one every Thursday and serve tofu fish and chips which is obviously delicious, and I think a diner night every Tuesday with vegan hotdogs, burgers and MAC AND CHEESE). Also, as you can see, they do pizza. It is a joyful thing. ~Rustic~ but thin, soft crusts literally smothered in the cheese of your choice (vegan or dairy, bring ya mates) and topped with basically whatever veggies you like. The pizza above has black olives and rocket and it was rly rly tasty and filling. I am feeling happy just thinking about it. 

Pizza rating: 8/10

5) Pizza Artisan, Oxford 

…or, the first pizza to ever receive a perfect score on this blog some months ago. Srs accolade. Ben had never had Pizza Artisan so we went last weekend after finding out that not only do they make amazing pizzas, but they also do vegan cheese. If it is possible to improve on perfection, Pizza Artisan did it. All of their toppings are so high quality, their sauce is so authentic tasting and the crusts are baked to to optimum deliciousness in their wood oven. I have nothing bad that I could possibly say about this pizza. Their service is great too - you can choose from about 4 different kinds of oils to have on your pie and there are bespoke extras for certain kinds of pizzas (swear I heard fennel seeds being offered but only for some pizzas - that's some bespoke shit). Basically, top class pizzas taken hella seriously. These guys treat pizza as an art form and that is how everyone should treat it. *Kisses fingers*

Pizza rating: 9/10 (it was a really busy Saturday night and we had to wait for like an hour in the cold, so whilst the pizza was 10/10 the overall experience of the pizza was slightly tarnished by this)

I hope that this ~round up~ of pizzas has served as something of an apology for my absence. I promise to do better next time. Happy Friday, eat a pizza this weekend xxxxxx

VEGAN TAKEAWAY PIZZA: Village Pizza, London - 9/7/2014 and Papa John's, Sheffield - 13/7/2014

When you are trying to eat vegan something that can be annoying is finding decent takeaway pizza. Takeaway pizza has always been a very important aspect of my life at the core of who I am, and I will not allow anything to change this.

Last week I was gross (great) and ate a lot of takeaway pizza. This is a post about that. The first pizza place I'll review will be London's VILLAGE PIZZA (the Old Kent Road branch). Village Pizza is one of London's premier vegan pizza suppliers, even doing pies with vegan cheese (the old classic Mozzarella-style Cheezly from what I can gather) and fake meat. We ordered two pizzas: one 16 inch (ridiculous) Pepe Peppers, consisting of Cheezly, fake pepperoni, jalapeños, sweetcorn and peppers, and one medium Spaniard - Cheezly, fake garlic sausage, black olives, fresh tomatoes and red onion. Here they are in all of their glory:

bby Spaniard

Pepe Peppers, total giant bastard

I wanna first of all give props to Village Pizza for thinking of vegans and making sure they too can get dope, artery blocking pizzas. It is important, in the interests of equal opportunities and so on, that this happens. The slightly bad news was that in both cases, the fake meat (the main draw other than the vegan cheese really) was sort of flavourless and not particularly nicely textured. I was not overly into it. The veg was all really tasty, though, and the pizza sauce was good in a pizza sauce way. However, the dough - special vegan dough also, but tbh I don't understand on any level why anyone is putting milk/eggs in pizza dough - was a little too soft for me, considering how thin it also was. Sad :(. The pizzas were also sort of cold when they arrived. In general, Village Pizza is not my favourite vegan pizza I have ever eaten, but their good intentions are admirable, and next time I'm in LDN I'm gonna be jonesing to try their Hickory BBQ 'za. 

A few days later, this time in Sheffield, we ordered more pizza because the World Cup was on. In a slightly excessive move, we ordered two Extra Extra Large pizzas (the Garden Party, which has the sort of standard list of veggie toppings, and the Hot Pepper Passion which was delicious and really fucking spicy due to chillies and jalapeños) and a small The Greek (more veggies, but slightly hotter due to added peperonata) because there was obviously not enough already. 

A downside to Papa John's is that they don't offer a vegan cheese option, but unlike their main competitor Domino's, Papa John's bases are 100% animal product-free (FYI, in general, their crust is very similar to Domino's - it's chunky and chewy and just really pleasingly bready but not too bready. For these reasons, I think it is really good). So, when the pizzas came, we just grated Cheezly over them, whacked them in the oven and took them out when they looked like this:

close-up of Hot Pepper Passion 'cause it looked dope/I couldn't get
decent photos of the others bc I was too eager to stuff pizza in every hole on my face

Though this might seem like a lot of effort to go to for a takeaway, it was actually pretty minimal and it ended up tasting gr8. Papa John's pizza sauce is on some classic New York pizza shit, and rly complimented both the dough and the veg. I can't praise the dough highly enough, and Cheezly, which featured again on this pizza, is always really good. 

Of the two vegan pizza takeaways, though it required a lil more effort, Papa John's definitely ended up being the better tasting option. Their pizzas made for a more satisfying slice (I would know, I think I ate about 10 and that is not an exaggeration), and there was some left over for dinner the next day. Dope as fuck. 

Village Pizza pizza rating: 6/10

Village Pizza

230 Old Kent Road, SE1 5UB

http://www.villagepizzauk.com

Papa John's pizza rating: 8/10

I'm not going to put an address because their are Papa John's branches everywhere

http://www.papajohns.co.uk