Dinner at Pizzi & Dixie

The Adventure of Black Pizza

Basics
Location
On Fb


Per Person
Shared starter, main, dessert, bottle of rose. €30
Reservations
Certainly at the evenings at weekends. It was full.

In Short
Hopes? And now for something completely different. For us, anyway.
Reality? Not a single ex-parrot or other animal bereft of life.
First Impressions? Smart. Open. Airy.
A USP? Smartly presented vegan food in a smart Malasañaish atmosphere.
The food in three words? Tasty, stylish, professional.
Can they get the staff? Yes and no. It's all a bit of a muddle, to be honest.
Service with a smile? Can't fault the tone at all.
Would you take your friends? I'd suggest going, certainly.
Rating for a dating? Perhaps not a first one. Unless you're clear, food-wise, you're both of similar minds. And you're taking a chance on awkward moments if the service is anything like ours.
Tip? We didn't get the chance.
Change one thing? Table service organisation. Not change it. Introduce it.
Going back? More likely than not.

Compare and Contrast?
Decent range, including V-options at El Rincon.

In Pictures
On Google Images

In Depth
Aspirational. That's a lot of restaurants these days. Trying to meet what they think we want our food and surroundings to be like when we eat out. The rule at the moment being, if in doubt, hang up loads of these...

...put some old books on a few random shelves, stick granny's old valve radio from the 50s in a corner and paint everything else, that's not an exposed bit of brick, concrete or whatnot, brown.

So - poshish Vegan? There's not been a huge amount of that about, but things are coming along. P&D didn't see the need to go for lighting that makes the place look like a sepia photo. It's pleasingly light, colourful and airy. It has the cache of a well-known name behind the scenes. The food is predominantly Italian in influence, but there's a fair few things of a Spanish bent.

We started there. Peppers stuffed with quinoa. 

Not the biggest starter in the world, really not an awful lot for two to share but good news in that it looked as good as it tasted. Some nice acidity going on in the sauce, although it did slightly overwhelm some of the flowery herby niceness on top.

And so onward. A major selling point here is the range of pizzas, with four different doughs available. Plumping for the Dixie with charcoal dough brought out this work of colourful art. Not at all sure the charcoal added anything aside from creating a prettier pictue, and I'd have liked the whole thing to have had a bit of crisp to it, but this was a pretty good deal, lots of excellent tomato, some slightly too liquid for my taste Vegan cheese and a terrific collection of onions, tiny, deliciously explosive red peppers and sundried tomato.

Tagliatelle with a curry sauce didn't quite match it. The pasta was definitely a bit under which was all the more mystifying as it arrived several minutes after the pizza. The curry sauce was essentially that. curry powder sauce. Some - slightly soggy - courgette added an acid touch that balanced things a bit, but this rather small dish lacked the impact of that multicolour marvel above.

Desserts followed the pattern of the mains, arriving seperately, several minutes apart. This really isn't what you'd expect at even the most basic restaurant and, for a place in this price and style bracket, is a frankly incomprehensible mistake. We were virtually the only customers at this stage of the evening, too. So we kicked off desserts (part 1) with soya milk panna cotta which had a reasonable wobble (3.5/5 on the wobblometer) , but could have done with some more of the acidic berry sauce to give it a bit more interest. Maybe five minutes later, the Pizza Dulce finally appeared.

I say appeared. It more hove into view, as it took some transporting. Maybe that's why it was late. Perhaps the initial server only made it halfway and, knackered, needed oxygen. It's enough for four. Easily. Not a mealy-mouthed let's pick at it and pretend we like it four. A keen, hearty I want my pudding, now! four. It's 20cm across. That means it's more than a third of a square metre of dessert. And before you ask, we used the appropriate formula to work that out.

Area = (pizza) 𝛑 x radius squared = stuffed h:m

It was slathered - and I've never used that word before in my life but nothing else will do - with nocilla/nutella. And pear. And strawberry. I think there's mango on there too. And that whte creamy stuff which I can't identify, but obviously isn't ice cream, as such. The fruit could have been marinated or steeped to add more oomph but it was exhausting as it was. I have to say all that nutty stuff meant this tasted like pizza bread covered in Quality Street Green Triangle puree. After while I felt like it I was missing the tree, the fairy lights and Death on the Nile or Mary Poppins on a TV in the background.

Like the Dixie earlier, an over-doughy base made things chewy and not blasted and crunchily explosive as a pizza should really be. Funnily enough, I found myself thinking it could do with some oil, but what on Earth do you use as an olive oil alternative on a sweet pizza? Anyhow, a good dessert, but, serious point alert, it's simply a waste of food if there's just two eating. I'd hope this would be against the principles in a place like P&D. Time to offer two sizes, I'd say.

After an opening Estrella Galaicia, a beer which has gained mystifying credibility in recent years, we went for Rosé. You may raise an eyebrow, but it's often a good choice in summer if well-chilled.

Despite an assurance, it was hardly chilled. It might have seen the inside of a fridge half an hour before opening. We ended up using - wasting - most of a bag of ice and a bucket to get it near a decent temperature. Credit to the immensely helpful head server for sorting this out cheerfully, but minus several points to the management for not thinking that non-reds need to be well chilled in July.

And here's the rub. Details are the thing that keeps P&D from the better write-up the ambitious food mostly merits. Four dishes over two courses arriving seperately when the place was still almost empty. Servers wandering about looking confused and waiting for instructions from someone more senior. A chef delivering plates to the bar for someone else to forward to a table. No extra serviettes appearing before the desserts. No olives or whatnot at the start, no chupitos at the end. A chip 'n' pin machine that only works by the front door - which meant they didn't get the tip we were still - genuinely - happy to award for the efforts with the vino. Even when I went in to book things were a bit off. The server on the bar didn't think to ask me what I wanted, but waited, in silence, for me to volunteer all the booking info. Very odd.

So, certainly go for the food, but with the...logistics, we wish you jolly good luck.

If you want big rewards, such as those famous little stars, remember the words of Master Kenobi.

And so would say the Michelin man...