Special Edition: Pizza Town, Cambridgeshire February 17th 2005

Pizza Town

3a Station Rd

St. Ives

Cambridgeshire

PE27 5BH

01480 494949

ggg

It's strange to think there was a time when people in this country didn't know what pizza or pasta was. You can still find some of them, elderly and whispy haired, wandering around Co-op in wonderment, looking at the Chinese and Indian aisles in a bemused fashion, secretly thinking to themselves that it's all far too crazy ever to catch on. Still, pizza has done rather well, and now everybody's at it. The consequence of that, is a lot of it isn't very good. Our dealings with Pizza Town started with a takeaway situation to quell the hunger pangs which developed during band practices across the road. Be warned, because I'm about to throw so many superlatives at it, you're going to start wondering if I work there, I'm being blackmailed, or I've sold out completely and signed a lurcative advertising deal. It just tastes amazing, if I could choose just one dish, and only one dish, to eat forever, pizza from Pizza Town could well be it. For £14.50, you get an extremely generously sized and topped pizza, two portions of chips, and a 1.5 litre bottle of soft drink. You can put whatever you like on the pizza, and can choose four from the list of toppings on the menu. Bacon, chicken, peppers, pepperoni, mushrooms are just a few of them. The chips aren't amazing, they're a bit limp and cold, but it scarcely matters given the quality of the core product. After a while, our love for Pizza Town grew to the extent that we largely discarded the instruments and went in to the restaurant to eat. The interior is very typically Italian. It's run by Italians, there's red green and white everywhere, white tables, ivy climbing up a trellis on the wall. The service is a lot like the decor, very casual, extremely friendly, a classic example of a place where everyone knows your name. Of course, when you began to order as much pizza as we were ordering, I suppose our names became much more worth committing to memory.

ggg

Verdict: A classic, casual pizza place in a fairly run down hole of a town that doesn't particularly deserve it. Really affordable, and there's even a salad bar during the day for the more health conscious, which we never arrived early enough to sample, but remains a good addition nonetheless. The service from the owners is warm and inviting, they clearly care about what they're doing and the food they're serving which, most importantly, is absolutely delicious.