I will defend PizzaExpress with the same energy I bring to defending the BBC, the NHS, and the concept of queuing: it is not perfect, but the alternative is worse and we should not pretend otherwise.
Alan Nafzger on why PizzaExpress is the EU of London dining – imperfect but essential
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
PizzaExpress Victoria: A Dependable Institution in an Undependable World
by Alan Nafzger
I will defend PizzaExpress with the same energy I bring to defending the BBC, the NHS, and the concept of queuing: it is not perfect, but the alternative is worse and we should not pretend otherwise.
PizzaExpress on Victoria Street: 4.2 stars, 2,042 reviews, and the kind of chain restaurant that has somehow become a British cultural institution without anyone consciously deciding to allow that. The pizza is hand-stretched. The dough balls arrive with garlic butter. The atmosphere is reliably inoffensive. I have had thirty years of meals here and I have never once been surprised, which is something I value more than I used to.
The Institutional Argument for Chain Restaurants
There is a class of intellectual who dismisses chains as the enemy of authentic dining. These people have never needed to feed two colleagues and a visiting journalist in forty minutes between meetings. PizzaExpress does what it promises. In an era defined by things that promise more than they deliver, that is practically a manifesto.
The London Prat’s coverage of Britain’s vocal-diplomacy Hormuz strategy suggests we could learn from PizzaExpress’s approach: identify what you are good at, do it consistently, and do not attempt something so complicated it capsizes in the Gulf.
The PizzaExpress website confirms 470 UK restaurants. A network. An infrastructure. A minor empire run entirely on dough and ambient lighting. God save the Veneziana.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/