Pizza East

Eating at your establishments have always been a pleasure. Chicken Shop, Dirty Burger and Deanstreet Townhouse. I want to be a member and after many years, I went to your pizza restaurant,Pizza East. Based in Kentish town at Highgate Studios alongside its family friends, Chicken shop and dirty burger, Pizza East is the restaurant most easily identifiable. The large ground floor restaurant opens its doors to over 100 covers and a bar to contribute to a relaxing and welcoming establishment.

Great location and it's very nice outdoors especially in the summer. Food is always very tasty and they always seem to have fresh burrata which is a plus!

The service was friendly enough to forgive their inability to bring us any mayonnaise after asking 3 different waiters, but hated it when they brought the bill without asking and ‘politely’ reminded me to hurry up so the next table could sit down to keep to their 90 minute turnover time. Although the starters were so-so, the pizzas were worth coming back for, and overall it’s a great place to come with friends if you can’t be bothered to head central. It has a real buzz that you tend not to get outside of Soho or Shoreditch, and for this reason alone it’s worth coming for. But it isn’t cheap. When you think of going for a pizza you’d expect to be all in for around £20. This can easily set you back double that.

Missed out on their main act, the pizzas, but had a couple of incredible small plates.

In terms of the restaurant itself, the decor of it is your cliched warehouse look: walls laden with red bricks and purposefully cracked white tiles; exposed pipes and bare floors; rustic wooden tables and stools.

Highlight was the pork belly, crackling and aioli.  A generous starter plate at £8, this also comes as a main.  It's a big flavor dish -- the aioli is pungent with cumin and garlic; the meat is silky soft and fatty and rich with spices; the crackling crisp and crumbles in your mouth.  It's a strong, robust and simply sublime plate of food.

By Koray Hussein

When I first heard about Pizza East I didn’t even bother to add it to my “to visit” list and just decided that I’d get to it when I got to it. I mean, I had places like Mother Clucker, Soho Bikes and Patty & Bun to get to… Then I was told that it was by the same guys who brought us Dirty Burger and Chicken Shop; resulting in Pizza East, not only being added to the list, but being catapulted to the top of it.

I looked up their locations and saw that they had shops in Shoreditch, Kentish Town and Portobello. I’d had my fill of Shoreditch for a while and seeing as how getting to Portobello Road is a bit of a trek for me, I grabbed a friend, jumped on the overground and headed towards Highgate to visit their Kentish Town branch.

We arrived at Pizza East in the early afternoon and were kind of taken aback by just how dark it was inside. It’s not like they went to the ridiculous lengths that some shops go to (I’m looking at you Hollister. Stop taking the piss, turn on the damn lights and let us look at your terrible, terrible clothing) and it’s not as if you’re going to be bumping into tables and chairs but it was noticeable.

That’s not a knock on the interior though because once your eyes adjust to the darkness that is Pizza East, it’s lovely. There’s dark wood tables and chairs, a bar that stretches out into the centre of the restaurant with old Italian style dried meat dangling down from the ceiling and the wood oven is right there for all to see.

I used to only buy vegetarian pizzas, alternating between your average vegetarian, vegetarian hot’s or any other meat free pizza, but a little over a year ago that kind of changed. I started to order mainly pepperoni and chicken pizzas and contemplated going for the spicy sausage, mozzarella and broccoli option but for some unknown reason my brain switched back to the veggie days and I was drawn to a four cheese pizza they had on the menu (which I cannot see on their online menu).

After umming and arring for a little over five minutes I settled for the four cheese pizza and my friend went for their buffalo mozzarella, tomato and basil pizza.

When the food arrived and we both tried each other’s there wasn’t actually much difference. Yes, I know we both went for cheese pizza’s but I was expecting the four cheeses to stand out but only the mascarpone really made any sort of headway with the others just blending into each other.

Don’t take that as me complaining though, because they were both bloody lovely and Pizza East is now up there with some of my favourite pizza places in the city (ICCo being another). Maybe both of us going for cheesy pizzas was a mistake if we wanted to sample their menu but I’m not too fussed… It just gives me a reason to go back for an update which I will definitely be doing.

If you’re a pizza lover (read: a human being) then you should definitely get yourself down to your nearest Pizza East as the food is of a good, high quality and the staff (at the Kentish Town one at least) are friendly and accommodating, with one staff member stopping midstride just to refill my half empty glass of water.

I’m not going to lie, that kind of freaked me out.

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Honesty time. I've been to Pizza East in Kentish Town twice. The second time was Valentine's Day. This is how much I like Pizza East.

That second visit was a blur. I was too lost in the moment to think of the food, and would have been wherever I was. So, out of respect to you, humble reader of Paul's Review, I shall regale you with the story of my first visit to PE.

I'm a long standing fan of Dirty Burger, and had sampled the delights of Chicken Shop. These restaurants are by no means irrelevant. They share the same site as PE - Dirty Burger the troublesome little brother round back, the Chicken Shop the cool, brooding brother living in the basement. But Pizza Easy seems to be the flagship - the public face of the trio. And I had yet to go. So I went.

I went for dinner, and it was busy. But me and my friend were seated at the bar-esque area in the centre. It wasn't at all unpleasant being sat on the tall seats by the bar. We felt pretty lucky to be seated at all. It is a cool place after all. Too cool? Perhaps. It does affect the rustic pizza look in a big old way. But, to give it its dues, it doesn't fall short of the ideal.

I ordered the garlic bread (which was naturally off the menu on Valentine's Day). I was delighted when it came. It wasn't some poor man's garlic bread in the form of some tired looking baguette, or some jumped-up pizza base which had dressed the the nines in garlic. Oh no, this was lovely, fresh bread - by turns crunchy, soft, and warm - lovingly infused with garlic. It was the right stuff.

And then the pizza. I'm used to eating pizza. Lord knows I eat enough of the stuff, and most Italian joins worth their salt will serve up a passable pizza. This is what I was expecting. This is not what I got. My waiter allowed me to make my own pizza by combing elements from the menu, and when it came, it was better than good. The ingredients were above and beyond what was expected. The base was delectable. This was a very fine pizza again. It all of a sudden felt right that I should be sitting on a stall, towering above the other diners. I was flying high.

Honesty time, I went to Pizza East on Valentine's Day in part because I left it till late, and it still had a space a week beforehand at the particularly desirable time of 9.30 pm. But I wasn't too upset. As last resorts go, it's not a bad one. In fact, it is my first last resort.

Screw Flanders.

We dropped in here with a group of five persons and got quickly all our meal during launch time. The food itself was really good and the service fast, friendly and attentively. The price was cheap because of the weekday special.

Decent pizza.. starters are very tasty. A bit on the pricey side for me for what it is, but pretty standard for London I think. Favourite is the anchovy pizza, and the calamari for starters (though they change these from time to time)

Gorgeous pizza. Sexy flavour if perhaps overloaded on buratta. Need to try the others. Downside was that we always had to wave someone over for service, whether to get drinks, the bill, etc. Would like to give 9/10

Gorgeous Pizza! Lovely place and food, I will definitely recommend it.

This was our second time eating at pizza east and our first time visiting the Kentish Town branch. Food was tasty and the drinks were delicious. Staff were super friendly& energetic. Great ambience and atmosphere all round. Ample parking across the road. Prices were a bit steep but what you pay for is what you get.