Melting Point

The melting point of mozzarella cheese is one hundred and thirty fahrenheit degrees... could almost be the start of a poem, but fear not - it's too glib by far. However, remember that fact, for it might come in useful later.

I have my sadly departed friend Lorraine Hurwitz to thank for introducing me to the delights of PizzaExpress (all one word) in London way back in the mid-1970s and it's been a constant favourite ever since.  In my estimation - speaking as someone who's probably consumed close on 1,000 of its American Hot pizzas in restaurants from Santa Monica to Warsaw - PizzaExpress has consistently provided the best pizza to be found outside of Italy; which assessment would have pleased its founder if he were still with us. (By the way. if you're doing the maths, that's approximately 20 American Hots a year. And what of it?)

That founder was one Peter Boizot. You've probably never heard of him. To paraphrase a famous Monty Python catchphrase: what has Peter Boizot ever done for us? You know I'm going to tell you, don't you?

He was born in Peterborough in 1929 on Lincoln Road (incidentally just around the corner from where my family lived thirty years later and a few doors down from where I had to go for piano lessons), attended St Mark's Junior School and then won a scholarship to King's School, becoming head boy there in the immediate post-war years. (St. Mark's is where I went as a boy and King's School is where I would have gone for my secondary education if we had not moved on to Cambridge in 1964.) After school he went up to Cambridge and gained a BA in history from St Catherine's College. Through family connections he worked for a while in Florence, where his love for good pizza was established. Having turned vegetarian at age six he was impressed by the sheer variety of non-meat dishes available in Italy. When he returned to England (after the death of his father) he chose to live in London, in Soho for its ambience and nightlife - jazz clubs in particular - but he bemoaned the total absence of good pizza in this country. Yes, it was available in some Italian eateries but the quality wasn't great and it was rather frowned on as 'peasant' food. The secret, Boizot learned, was all in having the proper oven. And so, in 1965, prompted by friends, he opened the first restaurant in the capital specializing in pizza, using a proper imported Italian oven and pizza chef to produce a quality product, hand-made pizzas following authentic Italian recipes and techniques. Many things Italian were cool in the mid-1960s, from stylish mohair suits to motor scooters (both touchstones of the Mod lifestyle). Why should classic Italian food be any different? It wasn't, and his first PizzaExpress proved very popular, so much so that he soon opened others around London - not that they were express in the sense of fast food, for everything was cooked fresh on the premises. It was quite the culinary and cultural revolution when Peter Boizot gave this country authentic Italian pizza, including a raft of vegetarian options, at affordable prices. 

Did I mention that he was also the first to import Peroni beer to the UK to serve in his restaurants? Or that very soon he was putting on live jazz for his patrons in the evening? Or that he worked in partnership with Italian designer Enzo Apicella to create beautiful individual themes for his restaurants that preserved and enhanced the buildings they were housed in? (The PizzaExpress in Coptic Street, Bloomsbury is one of my favourites, established in an old dairy and retaining many original features.) Or that he filled his establishments with tasteful decor and commissioned original artworks from local artists? He helped make Britain more cosmopolitan, more European, more fun. He became quite wealthy as his chain of PizzaExpresses expanded and was able to turn philanthropist to a number of charitable causes, as well as baling out his beloved Peterborough United football club on more than one occasion. Really, what a guy.

Ultimately because of his vision, we now celebrate national pizza day in the UK. The top ten PizzaExpress pizzas by numbers sold are as follows: Margherita, American, La Reine, Fiorentina, Sloppy Giuseppe, Vegan Giardiniera, Pollo Ad Astra, American Hot, Padana and Veneziana. For years, 25 pence on the price of each Veneziana was donated to the Venice In Peril fund, by which means PizzaExpress has raised over £2 million to help save that city from drowning.

PizzaExpress American Hot (with hot green peppers)

It's perhaps ironic that pizzas with pepperoni on (the American and its Hot variant) should feature so highly on the list, given the founder was a vegetarian. I will say only this: that my elder daughter who has also been vegetarian since a young age for several years made a singular exception to her creed for the sake of PizzaExpress pepperoni topping. (I believe there is now a vegan version of the spicy sausage available.)

Believe it or not, I have sampled many of the pizzas on the Express menu, but I keep returning to my favourite, hand-prepared, cooked fresh with plenty of black pepper. That subtle combination of good dough, tomatoes, molten mozzarella, pepperoni and piquant green peppers washed down with a cold Peroni is a pleasure that has never failed. Perhaps it qualifies as my comfort food.

 

Imagine then my horror when Blackpool's PizzaExpress closed during the first Coronavirus lockdown and never re-opened, even though it wasn't on the list of 73 restaurants the company announced it would be closing for good in the summer of 2020. Damn you, Coronavirus.

Blackpool PizzaExpress: closed by Covid, never to re-open

It was so sad to see those chairs stood up on the tables for months. And then one day the temporary fencing and skips appeared and the gutting began. I felt bereaved by its closing. Yes I can drive in under thirty minutes to one in Lytham St Annes or Preston (and almost certainly will), but it's not the same as being able to walk into town by day or night, enjoy a great pizza with a couple of bottles of Peroni and walk home again. Like all PizzaExpress establishments, it was both iconic and unique and associated only with good memories. It was a touch of class in the centre of town. Its decommissioning has momentarily taken a little of the shine off the jewel of the north.

Forgive the absence of a poem this week, mine or anybody else's. I've not written one and the poems about pizza that I've read left me feeling cold. It would need to be something that captures the bubble and grace of mozzarella at melting point (with slices of pepperoni and shreds of hot green pepper) and the cool ambience of marble-topped tables and art-deco designs... maybe one day, Pizza Expressions perhaps..

However, if/when you dine out in a PizzaExpress restaurant in future, maybe spare a thought for its visionary founding father and raise a glass of Peroni or Prosecco in Peter Boizot's memory.

 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Childhood Secrets

The going wasn't always easy for we junior citizens of the Undemocratic Republic of Mother & Fatherland back in the day, (Peterborough, late 1950s into early 1960s).

I'm not saying life was lived under a permanently repressive regime. Peterborough was actually a fascinating environment to grow up in, unusual for the times. Our next door neighbours were Italian and Polish, my playmates from along the street included Helmut (Austrian), Lima (Lithuanian) and Tamara (Ukrainian) as well as the usual Johns and Julies; there was a Greek-owned B&B (it called itself a Hotel) on one corner of the street, an extended family of West Indians at the other end, a smattering of American Air Force personnel (servicing the nearby Alconbury airbase) and digs for Peterborough United footballers with their wives and kids. Lime Tree Avenue was pleasingly and spectacularly diverse for an English street on the cusp of the sixties, but the Undemocratic Republic seemed stuck in a pre-war time-warp where 'Though Shalt Not' appeared to be the state motto! Therefore we frequently gazed in surreptitious envy at the rights and freedoms permitted to the children of more enlightened neighbours...

...like the freedom to watch TV (banned in the Undemocratic Republic - we did not possess a set); the right to spend pocket-money on sweets and comics (a frivolous waste, forbidden on pain of forfeit of funds); the entitlement to free speech (aka answering back - likely to incur corporal punishment); and for a heathen (see my blog from a fortnight ago) the unalienable right to do as one wanted with one's Sundays (no chance - church in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon and church again in the evening if we'd protested about either the morning or afternoon impositions).

In such a predicament, books were our lifeline - either borrowed from the library or purchased (an approved use of pocket-money) from the city's SPCK Christian bookshop in the cathedral precinct. The latter were invariably Puffin paperbacks. They were my window into a brighter, broader world beyond the sheltering shadow of the Undemocratic Republic (in much the same way that Beatles albums were a beacon of hope in the former USSR). Communication with the elders was limited and so knowledge came primarily from the written word. For instance, all I knew about sex as a pre-teen I gleaned from the pages of the Puffin Book of Muffin! (No, it wasn't actually called that. I wish that it were. It was full of stark facts and black and white diagrams.)

It can come as little surprise, then, to hear that we junior citizens revelled in reading seditious literature about kids who had shucked off the yoke of the oppressor: the Famous Five, the Big Six, the Secret Seven were particular favourites, kids who were doing it for themselves, braving danger, ignoring curfews, solving crimes and righting wrongs very often more effectively than their adult counterparts.

The Secret Seven in all their sartorial magnificence!

At the time I was surprised such subversive reading matter was tolerated in Mother & Fatherland. In practice we were just being played, kept tame - but never realised it at the time. Enid Blyton's books may have outstripped the Bible in terms of sales but they peddled vicarious pleasures, paradise deferred, a parallel set of illusions. Real life couldn't match up to the fable.

I was nine when my cousins Keith and Martin plus Aunt Amy came to stay. This was a novelty in itself.  Uncle George had recently died at an indecently young age of a heart attack. Smoking and drinking were rumoured to be his downfall - both banned, of course, in the Undemocratic Republic. We boys, lured by the possibility of being the Fantastic Four, conspired to have a secret midnight feast in the bedroom. Did I mention that eating between meals and taking food upstairs were also strictly not allowed? I was nominated to smuggle a banana - the first time, to my knowledge, that I had ever wilfully deceived my parents. I did this by hiding it down in my underpants. I was walking nonchalantly from kitchen to stairs via the dining-room when I was challenged over the stud-like bulge in the front of my trousers. Foolishly I denied the charge - the lie possibly a more heinous crime than trying to smuggle a banana in the first place. I was humiliated and sent to bed early without any tea as punishment. The dream of the Fantastic Four was also consigned to an early grave.

I never again misunderestimated (thank you, George W Bush) the pervasive intelligence network spanning Mother & Fatherland. That night, a hardened undercover agent was born - working alone and tirelessly, but in secret, for eventual liberation from the shackles of innocence, to a world beyond books, into the realms of experience.

I've had no time to write a poem this week, nor to identify anything that would fit. Maybe something about Stud Bananas will surface eventually, or a wry reflection on the Puffin Book of Muffin. Who knows?

Thanks, as ever, for reading the blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a good week, S ;-)

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