Element Pizza (3rd & Chestnut St., Downtown)

Hype: A couple people mentioned this place as having some good crust. We sure got burnt last time at Cottage Inn and we needed some redemption pie, so hopefully this place pulls through.



Scene: Element just opened I guess so the minimalist decor made sense. It's in an old bar so hopefully the put the space to good use some day with beers and the like. Not a lot to say here. We were pleased to see a lack of pretense and high prices- as is the case with other downtown area pizza shops.



THE PIE:

Crust- Lived up to the hype. Very, Very good crust. Very crusty on the outside with a doughy, airy interior. See above. Perfectly done, perhaps best in town.

Sauce- Sweet and good, but a little lacking in volume next to the crust and peps.

Cheese- Again, it was good, but a little out of balance. We understand that this is an artisan, fancy pie, but balance is the key to life. Rotolo's uses too much, these guys use too little.

Peps- Nice peps. Salty, spicy, and I guess locally made. We really liked em. They do overpower some of the other ingredients though.



Overall: Powerful peps, strong crust, and nice sauce. Very good pizza. They just opened so you sure won't find $6 drafts of microbrews and dudes in American Apparel tank tops...yet. Hopefully they keep the good thing going-- they have the potential to be awesome. Solid 4--5. This place would beat Yellow Brick in a stare down.

Tesco: Spicy Meatball Calzone

This seemed a bit posh for Tesco, but then in my eyes not living in a car with your wife-sister-daughter-mum is a bit posh for Tesco so maybe I'm a little bias. I hate shopping at Tesco. I'm not some anti-capitalist, burn 'em down revolutionary. I'm more than happy paying for Mr and Mrs Sainsbury's eighth summer holiday of the year, and I'm pretty sure I'm putting the Morrison's kids through higher education, but Tesco just feels evil. I think it's the font. I also don't like the slew of faceless celebrity voices that keep telling me 'every little helps.' Whichever way you look at it, that's a horrible slogan. Either it's really patronising, and suggesting that the huge, unbearable awfulness that is my life is, albeit briefly, relieved by the infinite benevolence of Tecso's 2 for £4 offer on Innocent Smoothies, or, and perhaps more sinisterly, it's implying that 'every little' purchase is inching Tesco closer and closer to some nefarious goal. Like there's the equivalent of Blue Peter's Totaliser in their head office, except evil, filled with blood and covered in skulls. Actually, I think I was right the first time, it is the font. Also, is there a more boring colour scheme than red, white and blue? I'd be more into a subtle range of greys and beiges. Patriotism, shmatriotism.

This was actually not bad, and I think it only cost about £3. That's pretty good for what is essentially a fancy, unorthodox pizza. What's fun about calzones is the way that, because all the toppings are compressed together, they burst in little pockets of tomato and cheese when you bite into them. Mmmm. That was definitely the sexiest sentence ever written in the history of this blog.

7 out of 10

Pizza Hut: Sizzling Sweet Chilli

Sshhh. This review is being whispered to you because I ate this while watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in a friend's living room. It was quite a small living room, there were about seven people there and as I was the only one who'd ordered food I felt bad because I was making a lot of noise while people, about 50% of whom I knew, pretended the volume of the TV was enough to drown out me wafting the cardboard pizza box around and chewing like a lawnmower. It wasn't. If they'd been a gullible bunch they might have thought Voldemort had cast a 'Super-Irritatus-Soundius-Everywherio' spell on Harry and the gang. However they didn't think that because I make a point of not hanging out with morons. Although we were a bunch of twenty-somethings getting emotionally involved in a Harry Potter movie, so maybe I do. Buckbeak... :,(

I've had bad experiences with spicy pizzas in the past. Sadly not exciting 'bad experiences', like attempted murder or heartbreak, only pedestrian ones like them being too spicy. Thankfully this pizza was spicy enough to warrant a "Woah, this guy's zingy", without becoming a "I can feel my brain sweating out of my nose, I'm going to stop eating so I don't die." This is a delicate balance to get right. I should point out those would have been internal thoughts and not said out loud, especially to group of already annoyed half-strangers, and especially not half way through arguably the best Harry Potter film of them all, and especially not when I was so hungry doing anything with my mouth other than eating seemed inconceivable. Especially, especially.

Sometimes I get like that, where I have food and I'm so hungry that literally all I can think about is eating. Things like breathing, manners and snogging hotties take a few steps down the priority ladder. The amount of times I've had to pass up smooching some next-level babe because I had pizza to eat is higher than you'd think, (assuming you'd guessed a negative number).

7 out of 10