Bad Boy Pizza Society - Sicilian Style
I'm sitting on a bad boy pizza information...Awards mean nothing in food
Opening Ramble:
Back to Bad Boy Pizza Society. After a less than successful foray with their NYC Style slices, I found out it was actually their Sicilian slices that were the award winners. I’m big a fan of the thicker style of pizzas. It brings back memories of those special school lunch days where we got piping hot cheesy pizzas. Thick and chewy hunks of bread with a generous dollop of tomato sauce spread across, hidden underneath perfectly melted mozzarella cheese. At least that’s what my food memory banks tell me, I’m sure this is brilliant nostalgia at work. Particularly dangerous nostalgia for food vendors because they’ve got quite a memory to live up to…Let’s see if the award winning square pies of BBPS stack up !
The Order (dishes as described on the menu):
Starters
Mozzarella Sticks
£4 Rating : 7.2/10
Mains
Pepperoni Alla Vodka
Mozzarella, BBPS Signature Vodka Sauce, Pepperoni, Fresh Basil, Parm£13 Rating : 6.1/10
Total Bill incl tip: £17
Overall Rating: 6.7/10
Review
The Vibe
I’m not going to spend too much on the Vibe section this week. It’s in the National Theatre building. If you can find a seat, it’s decent to sit in. If you’re on a stool as I was, it’s fairly uncomfortable after a while but that’s not anything to do with BBPS so let’s move onto things in their control.
The Food
The Pepperoni Alla Vodka Pizza
The Good
When you get your pizza, the wow factor is definitely there. It looks like Goofy’s pizza or even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle level of pizza. Wonderfully cheesy, multiple forms of cheesiness too, from the mozzarella on top and around the crust, to the parmesan. See even the caramelized crust cheese-ily and teasingly pull away from the pizza. Glorious.
They even have the pepperoni exactly how I like it. That deep caramelization that’s needed to really get the flavour of the pepperoni is abundant throughout most of the slices.
The Bad
However, that crunchy caramelization seems to come at a grave cost. Look at how wonderfully crisp that pepperoni is. Now look beyond that slice and see the absolute deluge of grease across that picture. All over my fingers! So greasy, it turns paper see-through, quite the magic trick. The window to weight gain as Dr Nick told us!
And the Ugly
I can get past the grease, a lot of us have skipped past grease to enjoy deliciousness.1 But what I can’t abide, what I just can’t get jiggy with, is blandness.2 You’ll notice a few things in the picture below, cheese and bread. But one thing is conspicuously missing…anyone else expect sauce on a pizza ? Isn’t that the key difference between cheesy toast, garlic bread and pizza ? I had half of the pizza and honestly, I only tasted the Alla Vodka sauce once. It was good, but it quickly becomes a faint memory given all the bread, cheese and grease. If you have an unfortunate bite with no pepperoni, you’re basically just eating some very heavy cheesy bread. Cheesy bread shouldn’t cost £13 however…Looking back at the pictures I took, I thought wow it looks like a good saucy piece of pie, but sadly my eyes were deceived twice. The sauce is purely surface level and spread thinner than the paper it arrived on.
The Mozzarella Sticks
Best part of the meal by far. If they’re aiming for drunken fast food aesthetic, the Mozzie Sticks soar. The dried Italian seasoning was a blessing and mixed with the perfectly fried breadcrumb crust for a great exterior. The marinara dipping sauce went well with it, without blowing my lil cottons off. Who knew, they do know about flavour?!?!?! Jokes aside, they deserve credit for a pretty good starter. Actually probably some of the best mozzarella sticks I’ve had. But…that’s not why we are here! So it’s hard to get uber excited about it. Maybe it needed the added ingredient of inebriation…
Conclusion
I can intellectually understand why this pizza won awards. On paper, those flavour combos on a thicker crust pizza with a caramelized crust is a treble winning mix. However, it seems that paper has been destroyed by the grease and while they might have brought their A game for the awards, they’re bringing their U game for us plebs. Don’t be so stingy with the sauce guys, an extra 25p worth of sauce is well worth it, given the price of the pie. Seems like BBPS once really were worth the hype but with success and branching out, has brought laziness and more of a frozen fast food type of pizza rather than quality Crisp pizzas that you might find in Napoli On The Road.3 Stark contrast to the mozzarella sticks which tasted fresh, crispy and delicious. Order twice the number of sticks and you’ll have a better time than having the pizza is my main takeaway honestly. Or just eat somewhere else…it’s Southbank there’s tons of better food around!
Shoutout to health nuts, looking after their #temples
Autocorrect kept trying to turn Jiggy into Piggy which was fun and I guess accurate
Two links to previous articles to finish off a thought, HE’S ON FIRE!