Pizzodyssey

Ah pizza. Toasty, cheesy goodness. It's the ultimate in lazy bastard food: you phone for it, it's delivered to the door and you can eat it straight from the box. No washing up. It's also appropriate for every meal. You can have hot for lunch or dinner and cold for breakfast. Great!* The only problem is the variation factor. Apart from the fact that most non-Asian restaurants have pizza on the menu, there are so many topping choices. Purists refuse to admit the existence of anything but the Margherita, but other people are willing to try gear like this:


Yes, there are cheeseburgers, french fries, extra ham and about half a kilo of cheese on that baby. The builders even took the trouble to brush the burger buns with extra tomato paste. I'm kind of hungry at the moment, so I have to admit, covered with cheese like that, it doesn't look that bad...

But where to find the best pizza? Everyone knows that you don't want to go near something from Haven Hut because they have as much in common with good pizza as the phrase "Mama's makin' Kanton" has in common with Iron Chef.

For example, I had a rather nasty pizza experience in Malaysia a few years ago. The pizza arrived topped with sweetcorn. Sweetcorn. Apparently seaweed was also an option, but I didn't realise that when we ordered. At the other end of the spectrum was The Best Pizza I've Ever Eaten, a fantastic seafood pizza from Nico's at Port Campbell on the Great Ocean Road. We were in town for two nights and we went back for that seafood pizza both nights. Damn, it was fine. Hello, Nico's? Can I get a delivery please? Um, yeah, we might be a little outside your delivery area...

I have had some fine pizzas here in Adelaide, of course. Manto on The Parade and La Trattoria are both to die for. But in the interests of science, I've decided to embark on a great pizza survey. I'm happy to take suggestions for places to visit and obviously I'll go to Good Life and Russell's at Willunga sooner or later. I'll even review one of the abominations on offer at Haven Hut, just for balance (and amusement value). I'll be marking out of five stars, with points for toppings, base, cheese and grease factor.

I thought I'd start with an ordinary old suburban pizza. (It was easy and I was feeling lazy.) So, here we go with Pizzodyssey #1.

Place of origin: Pizzas 4 You
Topping: With the lot, no pineapple, extra pepperoni.

Obviously this is no gourmet explosion, but it's fine for a Friday night just-crawled-home-from-the-pub sort of pizza. The base is thin and fairly crispy and it has a good base-to-topping ratio. The capsicum is a mix of red and green, which I don't usually like because green cap is crap, so to speak. But the I guess beggars can't always be choosers. They can, however, be whingers. It's pretty damned meaty, but I guess I did ask for extra pepperoni.

As for the rest of the topping, olives: whole kalamata by the look of things, not those nasty ones that have been picked green and turned black by some evil process that I don't want to try to understand; ham: it's that shredded stuff, which isn't great, but oh well; mushrooms: fresh, thinly-sliced, pretty yummy; cheese: pleasingly stretchy but fairly bland; pepperoni: it's not exactly the peppiest pepperoni in the world; sauce: a bit bland - I wouldn't mind a few herbs or some garlic; grease factor: average.

Overall: It tastes good and it has all the standard pizza elements, but I wouldn't tell anyone to cross town to get one.

Verdict: ***

* Please, please don't spam me, killjoy nutritionists. I'm telling you now, I just don't have the energy to argue. Obviously I'm not suggesting that anyone should eat pizza for every meal. In fact, I'm watching Supersize Me as I type this. I'm also extremely fond of spinach. OK? Are we good?