go west

“This is the furthest I can take you luv - the rest of it’s one-way,” said the cabbie before stopping the car and letting me off at the Oxford Gardens junction in W10. 

I walked the rest of the way to Pizza East Portobello, which occupies a corner location of Portobello and Golborne roads, in what many have dubbed ‘the wrong end of Portobello.’ I don’t necessarily agree that it’s the case any longer (with so many quirky little shops and cafes cropping up at a frenzied pace it’s more like the ‘new Portobello’) but I’m not going to pretend it’s the part of Notting Hill I usually frequent. Quite frankly, it’s just a bit of a bugger to get to. 

However, once I stepped inside the buzzy New York-style dining room with attractively large French windows, encasing the half wooden, half chequered floors, filled with mismatched tables and bright blue iron cast chairs, I soon forgot where I was. 

The decor at the Soho House Group’s second Pizza East outpost is even cooler than the first. Being in the Notting Hill / Ladbroke Grove area has given the place a charming neighbourhood feel, drawing in the area’s young, arty crowd as well as its more spendy, sophisticated-but-still-cool residents. There’s also something to be said about the service and the staff, which was different to anything I have ever experienced in London. They were passionate, laid back and professional; I instantly felt at home. 

Pizza East Portobello - a casual hang-out, cleverly designed for all hours of the day - has quickly become a favourite of the locals’. The ones who’ve discovered it come back time and again, often taking ‘outside’ guests so that they can show off how great it is. 

They may well have a point. I’m not going to say that the food was incredible - it wasn’t. But because I had such a brilliant time, I’m willing to overlook it. Seeing as there’s a no booking policy, it was just a question of getting there early enough to secure ourselves a spot, which we did... just. However we were punished by being seated at a tiny table in the corner and blessed with chairs that were too high. My knees were jammed up against the underneath of the table and the back of my seat was practically resting on the head of a lady sitting on the next door table. It wasn’t comfortable and I wasn’t pleased, but then a glass of very well-priced Montepulciano d’Abruzzo arrived, along with my fellow diner’s cocktail... the discomfort soon dissolved into thin air. 

The ‘Eastern Promise’ cocktail, a mix of lime juice, gin, cucumber and basil, was simply delicious and worth an extra mention. It isn’t actually on the menu but my dinner companion (a local who’s already too familiar with the cocktail list) boasts that it tastes like ‘spring time’ - light, refreshing, sweet and sour, yet understated and casual. One is recommended, three is a must. 

The pizzas were my least favourite dishes of the night. I loved the idea of spicy sausage, mozzarella and broccoli, but as a whole it turned out to be a disappointment. While the sausage meat was soft, succulent, peppery and packed with plenty of heat (which I loved), there wasn’t much of the rest, quantity-wise or taste-wise. The occasional mouthful of plain dough and unseasoned veg was just not entirely pleasant. The butternut squash and prosciutto pizza was marginally better. The saltiness of the ham was nicely balanced out by the sweetness of the squash, but after a while the whole thing just turned a bit soggy and lost its charm. On the other hand, the fig, endive, gorgonzola and walnut salad, though lacking in acidity, was a winning combination.

The rest was rather decent. The Burrata, accompanied by a small bowl of gherkins, was deliciously rich, creamy and smooth. As you can imagine, the sound of bone marrow bruschetta with capers oozed instant sex appeal. With bone marrow being one of my absolute favourite things to eat, it’s always a hard task to try and criticize any dish that serves it up so generously. But if I’m being totally honest... the toast was too dry and the parsley and raw onions, which should have been more finely chopped, were simply taking far too much attention away from the stars of the plate. The sickeningly delicious chunks of well-cooked bone marrow that so obediently disintegrate at the touch of your tongue, is what it should have been about. Having said that, I’d happily eat it again. The winning dish had to be our dessert: the soft creamy, bitter chocolate combined with salty, sticky and sweet caramel on a crumbly shortcrust base was sublime. The only disappointment was that it had to be shared. Needless to say, I’ll be going back to have a whole slice of my own, very soon.