Restaurant review: Pizza Express

Where I ate:

Pizza Express, Regatta Quay, Ipswich

I love Pizza Express and I hadn’t been for months, so when I got an email about a new summer menu, plus an offer for two courses for £11.95, I had to get my fix. The restaurant at Ipswich docks is lovely, especially at this time of year – the interior is spacious and airy, offering perfect views and it’s always nice to go for a walk after eating.

With a party in the evening (at Aurora – the cocktails are to die for, btw), I decided to go all out and have three courses! As always, the set menu was the same: garlic bread or doughballs to start, any pasta, pizza or salad to follow and the choice of ice cream or chocolate fudge cake for dessert. Next time I’ll definitely be choosing from the main menu – the summer desserts look so scrummy!

What I ate:

Doughballs, followed by summer salad and chocolate fudge cake

I can’t go to Pizza Express and not have the doughballs; they’re incredible and so moreish – I could quite easily skip the main course and have a couple of plates of them. They’re so light as well, so a portion of eight is nowhere near enough!

As soon as I saw the new summer menu I knew what I was going to have – the leggera summer salad. Yes, I’m one of those people to go to a pizza restaurant and have something other than pizza. The leggera pizzas are my favourite as you get the best of both worlds – a small pizza and salad. There’s no way I’d ever manage a whole classic or romana! The salad is under 350 calories, so it meant I could treat myself to a dessert as well. Surprisingly, for a salad, it was so filling! A bed of leaves were topped with chicken, goats cheese, blueberries, strawberries, basil and mint – and the light house dressing was drizzled on the top. It was definitely summery, with the array of colours, fruit and herbs – but so interesting too. I would never have thought to add berries to a salad but it really worked; the blueberries went so well with the cheese. The mint and basil added freshness, while the strawberries were slightly sweet. I wish I had the energy and ingredients to make this salad for my lunch at work – it was that good; I could eat it every day!

With only two choices for dessert, I always knew I was going to have the Bruce Bogtrotteresque chocolate fudge cake – I love love LOVE it! This time round, the slice didn’t seem so big and it was served with ice cream when I prefer cream, but it was still very good.  

The only thing to let it down was the service. The restaurant was very busy, even though we went mid-afternoon. It took ages to get our drinks and when the bill came at the end, we were over-charged for desserts. It was as though the waiter was annoyed that we had a code – and that took an age to process too. In the end, I couldn’t wait to leave.