Where: Melito Pizza Bar, Great Castle Street, Oxford Circus
With who: most of my colleagues over the last few weeksHow much: pretty good value at £3.50ish for a couple of squares of pizza, pastas and salads for £4-£5
Another day, another new opening in the new food quarter north of Oxford Circus... We now have more restaurants and coffee shops than Soho has irritating media types in horn rimmed glasses. Sadly the latest, a lunchtime pizza joint, looked more mundane than most.
Then you notice the menu, and it starts looking a little more interesting... five different pizzas, served al taglio (Roman street style*, chewy crust pizzas cooked and served from large rectangular trays) including a Salami Picante, an unusual Fennel & Parma Ham number and a Quatro Formaggi with Laverstoke Park buffalo mozzarella, gorgonzola, taleggio & ricotta. They've also got a couple of pasta dishes, soup and salads, but we're here for the pizza.
And it's not bad. Not bad at all... A little oily perhaps, but freshly cooked with no skimping on quality, pre-cooked and quickly oven heated on demand. The Fennel & Parma ham is particularly pleasing, with the caramelised fennel strips adding a pleasing aniseed note to the salty strips of Parma ham. Others try the pasta, with particular plaudits for the veal and pork meatballs, fragranced with sage, served with a well cooked macaroni.
It's a very pleasing addition to the area, and for £6 with a couple of slices, salad and a drink, it's one of the cheaper local options for lunch. Worth trying for the price, the quality is what will keep you coming back.
*Irritatingly Roman street style or al taglio is not the same as plain Roman style. I'll do a post on it when I get to the bottom of what the differences are...
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