I was quite excited when I saw this...

Well, relatively excited, or maybe as excited as I could be seeing a new product in a supermarket that I don't care that much about. Anyway, I thought this 'panini pizza' looked like it had potential. (Roasted veg, mozzarella, panini/pizza - great!) Sadly, I was wrong. Ok, I know pictures on ready-made food boxes aren't always to be trusted, but really... this only had about 2 bits of veg in it, and a load of cream cheese (it says creme fraiche but I think they are lying).

I griddled it, as instructed 'for best results'. It was pretty horrible and I wouldn't recommend it.

You may ask, I suppose, what was someone like me who usually cooks using fresh ingredients doing even in the pizza aisle? Or maybe you wouldn't ... as I reckon quite a lot of my blog disproportionately shows me to be a bit of a fast-food eater. I'm not. At least, I don't consider myself one. Just occasionally. Anyway, it's the Christmas party season and the fridge is bare. And I had to get some food in that my boyfriend would consider cooking if he was home, hungry and in a hurry and I wasn't around to force him to eat healthily. So I bought a couple of pizzas as I could shove them in the freezer at the end of the week if they weren't eaten.

Pizza Express, 83-7 Parkway, Camden NW1 7PP

I've just been out in Camden, but as we had an hour or so to kill before the gig we were going to started, my boyfriend and I met at Pizza Express. To review it succinctly, the food was good but the service was terrible, even though the restaurant was almost empty.

I had an American pizza (tomato, mozzarella and pepperoni) with extra chargrilled Italian vegetables. My boyfriend had a Bosco salad (marinated, cooked mushrooms, mini mozzarella balls, spinach, a honey and mustard dressing and dough sticks). I spied a new nibble on their menu, rustic tomatoes, which I thought I'd order to try, but sadly they didn't arrive until after our main course had been served and I'd had a chance to remind the waiter.

The rustic tomatoes had been marinated and oven-baked then left to cool. Served in a little dish with a few cocktail sticks, they were succulent, sweet and actually made rather a nice accompaniment to the pizza and salad, although they would have been equally as good as an appetiser. My pizza was pretty cold, but not cold enough to complain, and it had a good amount of topping as they didn't stint on either the pepperoni or the veg. The waiter had tried to persuade me I'd ordered an American Hot, but fortunately it seems my real pizza was waiting for me as it arrived virtually instantly. I do like Pizza Express pizzas, as (when they're made and cooked well) they have the perfect ratio of topping to base - I can't bear a bare pizza, or one with so much crust your jaws ache just looking at it. The salad across the table from me looked a bit small, so, to put it smugly I was pleased with my choice, which is always satisfying.

I sipped a half bottle of house pinot grigio, which was fine, and my boyfriend drank peroni after peroni, served in an effeminate, tiny, branded glass - very strange. He wanted banoffee pie, which I grudgingly said I'd share. Of course, when it arrived I ate most of it, although it was fairly disappointing - too much tasteless cream, not enough toffee, a thick, cardboard-like base and some old and tired banana. I've made it sound worse than it was, but it tasted more factory than home-made - and it's hardly difficult to make banoffee pie at home, or, I'd imagine, in a Pizza Express kitchen.

We waited so long for the bill and had to ask for it three times, so I wondered whether they wanted us to pay at all. It was £42 for the lot - not bad really considering the booze, but I think the poor service might put me off returning to that particular branch, although the pizza and salad were the usual reliable fare.

Basilico takeaway pizza

15/10/06

I had heard these were the best takeaway pizzas available. Naturally, I felt we had to sample some. We chose an Americana (italian spicy pepperoni, green and red bell peppers, spring onion chopped tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and mozzarella) with pineapple substituted for the jalapeno peppers - I love pineapple on pizza - and a Roma (tomato, buffalo mozzarella, grilled aubergine, rocket, parmesan, pesto and prosciutto crudo). I really didn't like the Roma - I can never understand the popularity of ham varieties on pizza, and the prosciutto crudo just wasn't very nice. And the aubergine was hard and fairly unpleasant - had it been cut along its width rather than length, the rather thick skin might not have overpowered the flesh so much. The rest of that pizza was ok. The Americana was pretty good. But both were very sloppy and messy to eat. They had thin, floury bases, black from the pizza oven, and crusts that were so tough they weren't worth the effort to eat. But the tomato sauce was obviously made from real tomatoes and appeared fresh - it had chunks, which was a nice surprise. The rest of the ingredients seemed to be of good quality. But, like all takeaway pizzas, at around £11.50 a pizza the Basilico seem rather expensive for what you get. Disappointing.