Pizza with Miss Brodie

Pizza Expresses inspire strong feelings. They are liked because they are smart, detested because they place style before content, portion control before generosity, meticulousness before spontaneity, small pizzas before large. They provoke familiar complaints, such as the one about anchovies being an almost invisible presence in pizzas that purport to make a feature of them. Their trendiness irritates, like the emphasis on gluten-free dishes, currently high-lighted on the menu - there’s even a gluten-free beer as an alternative to the established ice-cold  Peroni - a development  greatly favoured  by my wife, who is on a gluten-free  diet, but an annoyance to those who are not. 

Personally I have rejoiced in the existence of Pizza Express ever since the first one opened, all  those years ago, off Leicester Square in London, and when a new one opens in Scotland  I feel disposed to try it even if I know what I am going to eat. The way they convert old properties into something new and interesing is invariably resourceful and Edinburgh’s recently opened Morningside Pizza Express  is a case in point. Originally a church on the corner of Nile Grove, it welcomes you through its pillared  portal into a circular interior where the organ pipes have been retained as a visual  element instead of being slung out, as another buyer would instantly have done.

Set back behind trees from the bottom of Morningside Road, it has been fashioned into a pleasant eating space, with honeycomb tiles on the floor and  on the side of the central serving counter, with lofty modern murals inspired by the idiosyncratic Miss Jean Brodie in her prime  (her rcreator, Muriel Spark, was born  and educated just up the hill). On Fridays at lunchtime there is a regular influx of school-children, some of them probably from Spark’s old school, along with parents and grandparents.

The menu is much as usual, which means that it’s a mixture of recent additions and old faithfuls.  The pizzas are of course famously small which I infinitely prefer to gross pizzas with piled-up toppings of  a sort you seldom see in Italy. But there are also good salads  and a few pastas, including a classic lasagna, which is refreshingly not multi-layered but comes piping hot from the oven with a good mix of meat and tomato. Coffee, not particularly good, is served with the option  of a bijou dessert - figs and ricotta being a current novelty - but there is panna cotta or good ice cream, including sorbets, for those who desire something a bit more substantial. Trendy yes, but it works. 

29 June 2014