3. Theo’s w/ Aisling
A meal featuring frog costumes, joke books and Geography 🗺
📍 Theo’s Pizzeria, Camberwell, SE5 8SZ
📆 7:00pm, Tuesday 14 January
The entire aim of this adventure was twofold - to eat amazing pizza and reconnect with old friends. I’m so delighted that this meal smashed both - you’re in for a cracker.
This is the third edition of the London Pizza Pal newsletter - enjoy! 🍕
THE VENUE
I’d not really been to Camberwell before six months ago, but it’s quickly becoming a soft spot area for me.
I’d been at one of it’s lovely pubs over Christmas and noticed this little pizzeria next door. A quick Google and plenty of favourable reviews on the interweb confirmed it should be added to the shortlist.
Despite my ignorance, I’m sure Theo’s is a recognisable name to many readers, and though sadly the eponymous Mr(s). Theo himself was not on hand to guide us through our meal, I was excited to literally sink my teeth into his offerings.
THE PIZZA
PRICE - 3.5 / 5
My market research (eating pizza more regularly) is starting to solidify my cost awareness.
The current working baseline is that any full size pizza that is approaching £10 is a good deal, making Theo’s price point of £10.50 a good bet and giving it a good price score.
APPEARANCE - 4 / 5
This is what I’m talking about. Little cheese islands in the wider pool of sauce, some nice sexy basil leaves on top and a soft but crispy crust.
I’m making myself hungry again just looking at it. It’s also why I didn’t get an individual slice photo too - I was too excited to start eating.
SERVICE - 2.5 / 5
Absolutely nothing wrong with the Theo’s team, but I’d describe the service on the whole as perfunctory. Did the job but nothing more and so they get middle of the road marks.
Aisling did make the great point that the menu is VERY clear about what is a white pizza base, preventing the five stages of pizza grief, and so should be recognised.
TASTE - 4 / 5
Looks were not deceiving - this banged and was the best pizza I’ve eaten on this journey so far. Aisling’s choice of a cheeseless base with garlic, tomato and olives also slapped, so it’s clear Theo knows their stuff.
AMBIENCE - 2 / 5
A two room set up, we were unlucky to be seated at a bar area instead of the main restaurant section which resulted in a steady stream of delivery drivers hovering around us.
Plus the lighting was kinda heinous, hence the clinical looking photos. Even if we’d been in the restaurant proper, there was a lack of cosy vibe, so a different table wouldn’t have raised the ambience score massively. Not the best.
All that means it’s very tight on the leaderboard - Theo’s fits in snugly between our previous two outings, but definitively the taste leader thus far.
THE GUEST
Name: Aisling
Job: Journalist
Last pre-pizza rendezvous: About three months ago
This is Aisling!
She’s the first of my guests I categorically remember meeting - June 2014 in a drama workshop for potential scholarships in advance of girls joining the Sixth Form the following year. That day involved T.S.Eliot’s The Hollow Men, and I know that on our written reflection forms at the end I definitely wrote her name as ‘Ashling’.
I’d guess we became friends proper that Autumn - five mutual subjects compounded by hours and hours of rehearsal time was enough time to work out we had plenty in common.
Our shared interests? The theatre, obviously, an unironic appreciation of statistical demographic measures (like the Gini coefficient), and a knack of unnecessarily overanalysing everything, among others.
I was really looking forward to seeing Aisling - we were super close when we finished school and even used to grab catch-up lunches every university holidays. But real life, as it does, got in the way: graduation and Covid and tentative toe-dipping into the world of ‘proper’ work meant that those regular meals fizzled out.
I’m loathe to speak on Aisling’s behalf, but for me our dinner at Theo’s was equally as comfortable as those Wagamama meals were, despite now being over half a decade ago.
Our conversation across the three hours was incredibly broad, ranging from plumbing nightmares, our same-same but diff mental health, working night shifts (her, not me) and Eden Hazard (me, not her).
A favoured memory of Aisling was from a relatively innocuous Secret Santa in 2015.
I’d describe myself as anxious rather than angsty - that means that while I was fortunate to avoid any crippling ‘no one understands me’ phase, I was instead overly conscious of my perceived positioning within social strata (I still am, but that’s what therapy is for innit).
So, I remember travelling to this particular Christmas shindig with a healthy feeling of dread - retrospectively I’d describe that friend group as forming out of proximity not mutual interests.
Don’t get me wrong, this worry reflects more on me than anyone else. These people were lovely and a number are still very close friends, but sat around that table to exchange gifts, I was decidedly uncomfortable in their company.
I was lucky, then, that my present was from Aisling.
It was a joke book. The front and back cover had been covered in paper and her handwriting, a letter in lieu of a card. I still have a photo of it saved in my camera roll. At the end of a load of in-jokes that I don’t fully remember, a small P.S. that says ‘I miss you’.
It was an important reality check for me. I had friends around that table, real friends that cared about me for who I was and were unerringly kind. The rest of the evening felt a lot easier after that.
I remember Aisling’s story with particular fondness too, when a dozen of us went to watch a T20 cricket match at the Oval on the last day of mock exams.
Aged 17, we discovered the perfect age for this adventure. Young enough to blag our way in as U16s, which meant our tickets were £1 each, but crucially old enough to get served a handful of bars dotted around the stadium were Challenge 25 was not being ruthlessly enforced.
Aisling reminded me about the fancy dress, the obsession with making a beer snake from our growing collection of pint glasses, and the joking argument about which of us England captain Alastair Cook had waved at from the boundary rope.
What must’ve been an intensely irritating experience to everyone around us was an early summer dream for a bunch of sixth formers in the Friday evening sun. Even now, it sounds like a pretty great day out.
Our previous diner’s question for Aisling was, verbatim:
“What’s your favourite dish (and I hope she gets the meme)”
I was confused even after Grace linked Demi Lovato’s answer that prompted the question. Despite similar bafflement, Aisling responded with characteristic good-will:
This is her favourite dish, her deep yellow pasta bowl.
Aisling is now diligently thinking of her question for our next guest (and no pressure, but we all hope this format point improves with time - safe to say that between this and Fredegund, it’s been catastrophically bad).
On which note, that’s all for this London Pizza Pal edition!
Thanks all for the positive responses to these forays into unknown pizza territory. It’s been an amazing project to get off the ground and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the pizza and the company.
A fallow period for me next week, to give me my first free Saturday morning of 2025.
We’ll be back in February (unless something very special pops up sooner 👀).
Bye! 🍕
Want to be a guest and join me for dinner? Book your slot using this calendar: https://cal.com/andrew-cowburn/pizza