Mulberry Street, 7th October

We were supposed to eat at Mulberry Street the night before, a pizza place I’d heard of from Yelp because it was close to the pub we were going to. But we skipped food in favour of more drink. However, we ended up there the next day. Alison’s hotel was in Lancaster Gate and when we were finally able to get up and get out (we’d ‘retired’ to bed at about 7 am) we were in the mood for brunch. And we knew just the place that was close by – Harlem. We’ve been there several times before when Alison lived in that area and we absolutely loved it. Much to our dismay, we got to the end of the street it was on and realised it wasn’t there. It seems to be Tiny Robot now, which I think also does brunches but it was shut when we got there. As we’d searched for Harlem, we passed Mulberry Street and we decided to try it instead. Why not stick with the New York theme?

This place boasts about serving NY style pizza. They even go so far as to match the water they use for the dough to NY samples. And I love American pizza. So thin, so big, it’s hard to describe what’s so good about it and I don’t know why it tastes different to English ‘pies’. Maybe it’s just because they use the word ‘pie’ and we don’t. They had a lunch deal on – 2 courses and a soft drink for £10 which seemed silly not to do. You get a choice of two things in each course – bruschetta or salad to start, then a veggie Mediterranean pizza or a pepperoni pizza. The choice of pizzas on the a la carte was fairly standard, but you could also customise them. Anyway, we didn’t have those, we had the deal. The starters were average. Stephen got the salad and that was impressively large. Alison and I got the bruschetta which was definitely nice and fresh but the bread wasn’t at all toasted. It was much better once we’d poured the chilli oil provided all over it. Alison had the Mediterranean pizza, I ordered the pepperoni pizza and Stephen also had the pepperoni pizza even though he’d ordered the vegetarian one. (I don’t know why he did this, he loves meat). The waiter had not written our order down and had inevitably messed it up.

I don’t think I can say that these pizzas were genuine NY pizzas. I think the whole problem is the size. A real NY pizza is so big, you only eat two slices of it, and you’d buy one for everyone to share (which you would probably be able to get half of one kind, half of another). As soon as you scale it down to something one person can eat (or at least make a good stab at), you lose something. The bendiness, the foldability. Taste wise, it was good, and it was the right thickness (meaning it was very thin). And being able to add your own chilli flakes and parmesan also helped. I’d definitely go back there, but I can’t say it was the real deal. Just a damn good pizza.

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