Summer lunch at Pizza East Portobello

With their Italian style antipasti, wood-fired sourdough pizza, rainbow salads and Aperol cocktails what’s not to love about the new Pizza East summer food and cocktails menu?

Part of the Soho House group, Pizza East is a chain of five restaurants: three in London, one in Chicago and one in Istanbul. The first pizzeria opened in Shoreditch, East London inside the beautiful Tea Building warehouse. I have eaten there several times with friends and I have always had good food and a pleasant time.

The West London restaurant is housed in a restored Georgian pub in the middle of Portobello Market, Notting Hill. It has a different vibe from East London, it’s a more cozy, casual – less slick – like a neighbourhood cafe.

I was invited to try the summer menu at Pizza East Portobello last week, together with a small group of food writers. We sat upstairs, in a lovely private terrace full of light. It was a beautiful setting for our summer lunch!

Like the other Pizza East restaurants, the menu features Italian style salads, cured meats and cheese, wood oven meat, pizzas and daily specials.

We ordered a selection of antipasti to start: Marinated olives with Marcona almonds, Garlic bread, Pea & fontina croquettes, Seabass carpaccio with baby fennel & chilli, Crispy Pork Belly.

The burrata cheese and Parma ham were fresh and delicious!

I tasted a bit of everything, but saved my appetite for the main course as I love the golden, crispy dough of the pizza at Pizza East!

The Salami, tomato & mozzarella pizza was a great one, not too spicy and with a generous amount of topping.

We also shared a Spicy sausage, mozzarella, broccoli and cream pizza (we ordered it with tomato sauce though it normally comes without) and a Courgette, caprino, marjoram, cream pizza.

Other dishes we tasted from the Pizza East menu were the Aubergine, tomato, oregano, pine nuts and Mac ’n’ Cheese.

Pizza East is not an Italian restaurant, but the menu takes inspiration from Italian cuisine and it features many traditional ingredients of my home country.

We washed down the food with Prosecco and cocktails. I loved the Aperol Twist made with Eristoff, Aperol, limoncello and lemon.

We skipped desserts and coffee, because obviously we had already over-indulged in a delicious carb feast! I am perfectly happy eating bread everyday (perhaps my stomach disagrees…) so I loved this lunch at Pizza East!

If you can’t go out to eat pizza at your favourite restaurants, why not try making pizza at home? Making great pizza at home is easy when you have a great pizza dough recipe, high quality fresh ingredients, time and a good oven!

Disclaimer: I was a guest of the restaurant. All opinions are my own.