We unleashed new contributor David Padbury to take a look at Pizzaluxe, a new enterprise opening in Manchester’s Arndale Centre next week for a sneak preview and yes to please our Italian friends there was no sign of any pineapple
Hmm, I wasn’t sure about pizza and cocktails as a combination before sampling Pizzaluxe, which opens in Halle Place in the Arndale Centre on 19th July. Surely, cocktails belong more in a bar and pizza in a restaurant.
Paul Goodale, founder of Pizzaluxe doesn’t agree. My first impression on entering is that this is more of a bar than a standard restaurant, from the stylish décor with lots of chrome and plants, the background dance music and the bar stools to allow late shoppers or evening-outers to have a drink and, possibly some pizza.
Pizzluxe fits nicely into the rapidly developing trendy food destination of Halle Place, alongside the likes of Archies and Wolf Italian street food. As well as pizza and a full range of drinks and cocktails, they will offer a £3 fixed price coffee and cake option for shoppers needing a break from their retail frenzy, with seating on the outside of the restaurant to tempt customers who are put off by the thought of stepping in.
So is it any good? We sampled a range of food offerings, dough and dips, fresh dough sticks with pesto and tomato dips and three different pizzas. As a dedicated carnivore, my usual reaction to vegetarian options is along the lines of “it is ok, just needs some meat”. However, I wolfed down the funghi pizza, with mushrooms, balsamic onions and flat leaf parsley and it was deliciously tasty.
The star, however, is the pizza base, made from organic flour, the 96 hour slow proven sourdough is light, crispy and just delicious. Surprisingly, the funghi was my favourite. As my companion is the complete opposite to me and a vegetarian, I had the chorizo pizza to myself, with goats cheese, an unusual touch with roasted grapes and honey drizzle which added a little sweetness and just the right chorizo to cheese ratio.
I have been avoiding chorizo for the last 2 years as my wife and I had almost reached the stage of having chorizo on our breakfast cereal but it wasn’t doing our health much good. So it was a rare treat for me and chorizo hasn’t got any less scrummy since I stopped eating it.
The vegetarian pizza featured all sorts of goodies, including, we think, artichoke, grapes, asparagus, tomato and “pizza sauce”. . My companion clearly had the veggie option to himself and pronounced it “really good”. The “pizza sauce” is their own recipe and I think it merits a better description as “pizza sauce” doesn’t really do it justice
All in all, the pizzas were lovely, albeit not first date food, with the pesky stringy mozzarella making spillage a high probability but a bib would probably also not really be first date material either.
We also sampled a couple from the cocktail menu, the classic negroni, about which Orson Wells said, “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other” and Aperol Spritz, another very old drink which has massively grown in popularity in more recent times. The Aperol Spritz in particular was refreshing and perfect for a summer lunch.
Purely in the interests of research, we also tried a couple from the red wine selection. The Merlot was smooth and fruity while my companion’s “lighter option”, which we think was the Sangiovese Rubicone, was also excellent.
We ended the lunch feeling slightly tipsy, nicely full but, because of the stupendously light and crispy pizza base (did I mention that I really liked the base?), not completely over-faced and wanting a nap.
Overall, I am won over to the concept of pizza and cocktails and I think it can work. Pizzaluxe will be open until 10pm and their challenge will be attracting people into the lower footfall part of the Arndale in the evening as well as the late-night shoppers.
My only slight criticism is that the booths became a little cramped with two six foot blokes with long legs after the first hour but I would definitely come back for the atmosphere, lovely pizza (did I mention the base was great?) or just for a drink on a night out.
