1. Pizza Union w/ Theo
A meal featuring Clifford the Big Red Dog, Geese & The Birth of Western Society 🍕
📍 Pizza Union, King’s Cross, N1 9JY
📆 6:30pm, Friday 3 January 2025
Uh oh. This whole thing was nearly derailed before it had even begun.
The voice note reply? A totally understandable, but tragic last minute cancellation.
My laugh react? For a section of the transcript:
“I decided to keep the diary of my head different to the diary of my calendar.”
I appreciate the honesty, Hetty, but that is poor planning.
24 hours to find a replacement, lest I start my quest alone.
But who’s that? A young upstanding gentleman emerging from through the cold London winter?
Step up Theo, the only friend with no plans on a Friday night, to help out his boy. (Yes, his partner is on holiday in Australia - why do you ask?)
Crisis averted. A pioneer secured to join me on this great adventure.
This is the first edition of the London Pizza Pal newsletter. Enjoy! 🍕
THE FORMAT
To kick off, some ground rules. That’s because (and say it with me): 👏 FUN 👏 MUST 👏 BE 👏 ORGANISED 👏
🍕 Every pizzeria will be judged against my revolutionary P.A.S.T.A. scoring system: Price, Appearance, Service, Taste & Ambience. Each category is marked on a scale of one to five, with a grand total placing it on the leaderboard.
🍕 They say that the true test of a chef is how well they can make an omelette - who is able to perfect the simplest dish? The humble Margherita will therefore be our benchmark - I’ll always compare price and taste of the old familiar so that comparisons are like for like.
🍕 Scores are made against all pizza types, ranging from your 70p supermarket pizza all the way to a traditional, wood-fired Neopolitan masterpiece. So, don’t be shocked to see a full range of scores being recorded.
All understood?
Great! Onto the main event.
THE PIZZA
I’ve not been to Pizza Union before, and I’m going to make a bold statement straight off the bat - I think you’ll struggle to find a better base price at any pizzeria in London.
PRICE - 5 / 5
A 12 inch pizza for £5.95? Unbelievable Jeff.
APPEARANCE - 3 / 5
Hey, I think this looks pretty good. It’s not overly dry or wet, a nice bit of basil on the marg, does a job.
SERVICE - 2 / 5
It’s an ‘order and collect at the counter’ scenario, so it was always going to be difficult to a four or a five.
The one interaction with a staff member was with my guy at the till. He looked pretty disinterested in being there (fairs), but was by no means outright rude.
Food was cooked crazy quickly, so no real complaints from me. It’s just I have to budget for some super friendly waiters and chefs down the line, hence the low score.
TASTE - 2.5 / 5
Hit the spot without being remarkable. Dough was basic but cooked evenly, sauce was a perhaps a tad salty, and the cheese was a bit bland but not dried out.
The size was great - filling but not a battle to finish - and especially for its price point it did the job.
AMBIENCE - 3 / 5
It was giving food hall, but not in a derogatory way. A very pleasant level of busy, nice tiles on the table, loads of space. Fitting with the no frills vibe, it was a nice spot to spend an hour.
A very respectable 15.5 puts Pizza Union on the leaderboard. By default, it’s in first place. But who was it that joined me for dinner?
THE GUEST
Name: Theo
Job: Management Consultant
Last pre-pizza rendezvous: 6 days ago
This is Theo!
By process of elimination, we think we met in September 2005 under the eyes Mr Patterson & Mr Butcher in the combined U8 C/D football teams. Frankly, neither of us fully remember - we were seven.
We spent 11 years together at school before another three studying the same degree at the same university, and in adulthood probably see each other each at monthly (at the very least).
Our shared interests? Among others, the Byzantine historian Peter Frankopan, the as-yet-unwritten “Geese: The Musical” (Grease, but every actor is a goose and there’s magnitude more honking), and an undyling love for the Brentford FC Danish triumvirate of Thomas Frank, Mikkel Damsgaard and Mathias Jensen.
Theo was and is a debater (read: he argues for fun), which makes for varied conversation. Over dinner, we chatted about his upcoming move into a new flat, your friend and mine Jack Hagger (now a teacher in Leeds), and how quote “for many reasons” he did not want to marry his sister. **
** Editor’s note: This was definitively unprompted. Yes, I know, it’s a weird thing to say, but I suppose if you’re being forgiving, it is good to know.
Because this project exists in no small part to celebrate my friends and the times we’ve spent together, a recurring format point of this newsletter will be the (uncharacteristically earnest) sharing of a happy memory I have of my guest, and vice versa.
Having not properly scrutinised my own format, I was surprised by the sincerity of Theo’s answer. He recounted one of his favourite memories of me as when he came to watch a play I’d written and directed at uni.
He described it to me as a genuine piece of art, something he wished hadn’t ended, and how proud he was of me for doing it. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. What an excellent bloke he is.
I admire Theo specifically for his ability to speak to new people, and it’s this skill that prompts my treasured memory of him.
Picture The Wibbas Down, a Wetherspoons, early Summer 2016. Theo got chatting to a man in his mid-twenties called Chris sat at a nearby table. Chris thought we were a young couple for the way we bounced off each other. We were flattered, but that was not true - we were just giddy in the midst of that post-Year 13 exams period where our plans were exclusively to drink as much as possible,to no end.
Theo’s retort was to make jokes that Chris was like Clifford the Big Red Dog, on account of his red hair (not a particularly subtle attack but probably felt hilarious at the time). His blythe attitude to chatting to this stranger saw an unlikely friendship (?) blossom.
Chris is now well north of 30, a Director at a global Risk Advisory firm and owns a house in Greenwich. He still wishes me happy birthday every year.
As someone notoriously stuck in their own head, Theo’s “care less” attitude to meeting people has positively encouraged me to push my comfort zone, and has definitely over time helped me make more connections.
Dinner with Theo, as always, was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I’m looking forward to the next time.
So, thanks to Theo for his company, and thanks to you the reader for joining me on this first foray into the great pizza unknown.
To foster community among the London Pizza Pal readership, Theo’s final act was to pose a secret question to my next guest - so tune in next weekend to find out what it is!
With love,
London Pizza Pal 🍕
Want to be a guest and join me for dinner? Book your slot using this calendar: https://cal.com/andrew-cowburn/pizza