Pizza Express has become very famous when it comes to people
dining out for pizzas now. And with the increasing popularity, they get
something new to the table with a festival every now and then. The current
festival they have is the Hawaiian
Express. A range of pizzas, a starter and a pasta, is what they have on
this menu, along with a wide array of cocktails and mocktails.
The Hawaiian Express menu started with Lamb Polpette in the signature thick tomato gravy of Pizza Express.
This sauce is addictive with such good balance of sourness of the tomatoes and
the spices in it. And the lamb by itself was so flavourful too.
There are four pizzas in this menu, out of which the Pollo Cajun was my favourite! A nice
thin crust pizza rectangular in shape, topped with Cajun sauce, Cajun chicken,
emilgrana cheese, bell peppers and sundried tomatoes. Only the sundried
tomatoes should have really been ‘sundried’, but the pizza on the whole was
delicious to the core! The least impressive for me was Gambero. This pizza had an Indian touch with it, and the base was
to die for! The sauce in the base was made of Dijon mustard and coriander pesto
mixed with passata, and the topping was that of prawns and mozzarella with
pepper. The thing that made this pizza was the overpowering taste of coriander
for me. For a coriander lover, this pizza had nothing lacking in it, but for a
person who’s indifferent towards it or not too fond of it, there was just too
much coriander- first in the base and then sprinkled on top of the pizza too.
But had the coriander not been there, I would have finished off the pizza in
minutes with that beauty of a sauce in the base. Very different from the usual
tomato based sauces.
There was a version of Lamb Polpette Pizza too, which had the same lamb as in the starter,
but the pizza also had onions, mozzarella, coriander, and a delicious yoghurt
mint dip. I took off the excess coriander from this one because of the overload
of coriander in my previous pizza, but the best part about this pizza was the
yoghurt mint dip. Contrasting flavours when seen with the lamb but just what
you need to cut down the heaviness of the lamb. Really yummy! The last pizza on
the menu was Hawaiian ‘PizzaExpress’.
This one had béchamel sauce in the base, and a pineapple chutney for the
‘Hawaiian’ in it. It sounded really overwhelming when I heard it, but
thankfully the pizza wasn’t loaded with it. The chutney was only tasted in places
and frankly, the crushed pineapples felt very good. A nice change from the
pizzas based solely on lamb, prawns and chicken. This one had a surprise
element. Out of every 5-6 bites you took, you tasted the pineapple only in 2-3,
and it’s great that the chef isn’t shoving it in people’s mouth in every bite
and making it too much for them. What balanced this sweetness perfectly was
some crazy good crispy ham and onions, with a spicy chilli kick on the pizza.
The pasta was a Linguine
Cajun Gambero. For 795 plus tax,
this looks quite steep, but the pasta is loaded with huge juicy chunks of
prawns that justify the price. The pasta was a cream based one with Cajun sauce
and Cajun seasoning, sundried tomatoes and grilled pepper. Too creamy for many
on the first bite, but I loved the pasta on the first bite. It’s heavy no doubt
because of the cream, but I liked it. Not an insane dish I would say, but
decent. The heaviness justifies the price all the more for me, but then for
those it doesn’t, Pizza Express isn’t really seen as a pocket-friendly place
anyway. Ended the meal on a sweet note with their Classic Cheesecake and Banoffee Pie. They have the best New York Cheesecake in Delhi hands down!
They have a decent share of thought given to the drinks as
well, with milk based drinks and shakes given a lot of importance too. I tried
the Mango Fresca- best of the lot. A
nice sweet and sour mix of mangoes blended together (a crushed mango version)
with ice and water. Very refreshing and not too sweet. Molto Berry wasn’t as good as the Mango Fresca for me (maybe
because I don’t like my drinks too sweet, and because I have an aversion for
drinks with too much crushed ice), but it’s a nice drink for people who like
sweet fruity drinks (with berry and apple). Out of the cocktails, the Guava Mary is a sure shot winner. It
doesn’t even need a description. Just go and order it!
Before we started with the Hawaiian Express menu, Chef Manish gave us a live demo of making pizzas, and let us make one ourselves too. From the base, to spreading the sauce, topping it with cheese and vegetables, and telling us the nitty gritties of pizza making. Quite an interesting session! Did you know, the sauce used at Pizza Express in the base of their pizzas is called a passata sauce, one that’s common across all their outlets in the world. Talk about consistency and standardisation across outlets! For every pizza of theirs, they use 85 grams of flour and use Carlo oil on the edges of the pizza before baking it. When we got around to making our own pizzas, we did so with all the precision we could- using 78 grams of the passata sauce, following the technique of rolling the dough and stretching it, and making sure the pizza didn’t have thick edges.
The festival is a really good one for me. The things that I
liked the most- Lamb Polpette, Pollo Cajun Pizza, Hawaiian ‘PizzaExpress’
Pizza, Guava Mary and Mango Fresca.
Connect with me on:
Twitter: @sahibagursahane
Instagram: @thetastingfork
One of the best food served in pizza express.. I'm never test like before.
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