Newrinals

York's Pizza Express has just been reopened after a refurbishment and in the main it's not too different inside. It used to be a nice old building and now it's still the same nice old building just with different tables and chairs.

We ate there last night and the most significant change I noticed was that Peroni is now available in Big bottles as well as regular ones. Saves reordering.

More strangely, they've done an odd thing with the urinals. The gents' ones at least - I can't comment on the ladies' urinals. Because I didn't go in there. I'm a gent not a lady.

But the gents' ones, they used to be these big porcelain jobbies. Clearly quite old as they were a bit cracked and they don't make em like that any more. About 5 feet high from ground to the top, against the wall and with dividers between where different gents would wee.

They're still there now but you can't wee in them because there's kind of a dark glass screen in front of them. You wee on that instead. At first you think the old ones have gone but then you realise you can see a kind of reflection in the glass that looks like the old urinals. And then you realise that it's not a reflection, but a transparency and that the old is still there, behind the new. And then you realise that whilst you've realised all this you've forgotten what you're supposed to be doing and have wee'd all over your shoe.

Probably.

How are you supposed to spell wee'd by the way?

Other than all that it's business as usual. I had a good Diavola, very nicely spicy. And a big aforementioned Peroni.

Also on Tuesday nights at the moment, the Pitcher and Piano are doing two pints for the price of one on all pints after 6pm. That almost makes it criminal to not go there on a Tuesday. I'd have taken more advantage if I hadn't had to get the seven o'clock train to Peterborough this morning.

Capitalist Pizza Scum

They say hard times are coming. They say standards of living are going to fall. They say recession. They say inflation. They say lots of hard things I don't understand.

But today I found hard evidence that we're going to need to tighten our belts. We ordered a couple of pizzas from Dominos and their prices seem to have jumped by over 10%-15%! Large pizzas are now about two pounds more than they were a couple of weeks ago. I could barely believe my wallet.

Apparently it's linked to unprecedented rises in the world price of Mozzarella or something. Bollocks more like.

Didn't stop me ordering the yummy pizza though ;-)

Late(ish) Night Pizza

I seem to have just about survived the Christmas party period and am now more than ready for two weeks off work. It's been quite hectic/alcoholic and I couldn't actually face staying out past about half seven last night.

Instead, I came home and cooked myself a pizza. K had got me some prawns out and defrosted and she'd intended for me to make them noodly. I, however, had a different plan and I wanted them on pizza. Unfortunately I didn't have baking powder like the recipe said I should have. I went out to the local shop but it was shut. Darn. So I made the thing anyway and it was absolutely fine (which proves that Delia Smith knows absolutely nothing).

I also didn't bother with any cheese.

Gnome Quizzing

You've got to love York - the only town in the UK (*) where you can see man called Alan (who used to drum in a 90s Britpop band) conduct a buzzer based quiz in a pub with a slightly rude name but excellent pizza.

We went there tonight and fielded a team called The Gnomes - I myself was not gnomelike but two of the others were on very low chairs and the fourth member had a big red beard. Seventh place out of eighteen. Not impressive and no prizes won. But I did get to have a nice pizza for my tea.

(* apart from Bolton where Alan from Oasis does the buzzer-quiz every Wednesday night in the Fudgepackers' Arms)

Food Labelling Wars

A year ago I complained about the labels that Sainsburys are using on their food these days. They look like pie charts, but the segment sizes in no way correspond to the amounts contained in each slice.

These things have actually been in the news today as two new systems are being launched in competition with each other. The one that Sainsburys supports is the traffic light one as this is most similar to what they currently do now. I was suprised when I read this as I'd never noticed any traffic light colouring on the current pie charts.

However, looking at one now (on a pizza!) it is quite clearly colour coded red/amber/green for bad/medium/good. I feel quite stupid that I had never noticed this before, but it's possibly because on all the food I eat, all sections are normally green (ahem).

The other new system (that Tescos likes) is the GDA system which uses pastels and shows things as a % of your total recommended daily intake. I'm not sure which system I like best. It seems an odd thing for them to be arguing about when it would be easy for everyone to adopt the same standard that would have all the information. But I know that the electronics industry has had these kinds of problems for ever. It's easy to say that everyone should just use one format, but doing that in practice? Hard.

Mind you, whatever they do, I doubt I'll pay much attention. It's kind of obvious to me that some foods are healthier than others. Grapefruit good, Brie Bad.

Do you deliver? Yes? Can I have a liver and pineapple pizza then please?

I quite enjoy dirty pizzas - not ones that are actually dirty, but pizzas that come from your generic takeaway kebab/burger/fish/pizza outlet (I nearly used the word "restaurant" there but thought better of it). Actually, most of them probably are dirty. You never know quite what you are going to get and some places do much, much better ones than others. Each new place is a new experience.

Found a great new one last night - Salsa Pizza in Acomb. The best thing was that the pizzas weren't overloaded with cheese - sometimes you get one and you can hardly find the pepperoni for the cheese, if indeed you're lucky enough to have real mozzarella rather than the strange cheese substitute that I believe sometimes acts as a stand in. These ones had just the right amount of cheese - much closer to what you'd get on a Dominos or Pizza Hut pizza. But much cheaper!

I had pepperoni, jalapenos and green peppers. Tasty. I wasn't really particularly hungry because I'd had a big plate of pasta before going out. However, I was a little drunk and I managed to get through three quarters of an 11 incher.

So if you're ever in the area, consider this to be a recommendation.

Mmmmm... pizza.