Tag: pizza

All Back to Sidmouth Street: The Olive Pizza & Grill

We are creatures of habit here in old Devizes. We’ll stand in the Market Place wearing a vacant expression, wondering where we can bag ourselves a good kebab in town now the Kebab House is sadly no longer. I urge you to think Sidmouth Street, think The Olive….

Yeah, I get you. Save the longstanding New Pacific Chinese, the previous takeaways in Sidmouth Street didn’t receive great appraisal, causing the street to be considered a no-go zone for the peckish. Well, times change. With Mustafa Suna, the once owner of the Kebab House content to be relocated a hefty trek away at the Garden Trading Estate, the new option is The Olive Pizza & Grill; you best believe it.

It was newly opened a couple of months ago. By name, it sounds fresher and natural, but does it live up to its name? I thought I’d drag my tastebuds there to find out…..

Shenol Redzheb is the owner of this tidy little takeaway where Acropolis once toppled. He cut his teeth at Chick-O-Land, where he spent thirteen years, but was adamant about building his own new legacy here. It certainly was spotless and hospitable, with everything freshly prepared right before your eyes.

The range is fantastic, too. The standard range of kebabs, combo or wraps, burgers, and chicken, but with a pizzeria too, choices are ample for the most fussiest of families, like mine! One apple of my eye opted for a cheeseburger, the other a pizza, and the wife and I went for the donor kebab, though she favours garlic mayo on hers; sacrilegious! I say this because the homemade chilli sauce here is to die for, really rich, perfect level of hotness and tomatoey; yummy, yummy, yummy, love in my tummy.

In fact, everything was well received. The boy’s burger was apparently “ummm,” and despite explaining I needed a bite for the purpose of the review, he wasn’t giving it up without a fight! The daughter praised the pizza, and she’s the Jay Rayner among us, but she especially adored the chips, describing them as crisp, and they were, I concurred. Perfectly cooked little beauties, and cut just the right size to be best considered “chunky fries.”

The kebab was lovely too, meat, tasty, a good range of fresh salad, and oh, did I mention the chilli sauce?! It’s worth mentioning twice!

Portions generous, all at a competitive price, the family were happy. I’ll be back faster than Schwarzenegger for an uzi 9mm. You should give this local owner’s new enterprise a try. There’s vegetarian options, phones, and an online ordering website HERE, and they deliver right out to the sticks, at around a four mile radius; dinner sorted!

The Olive Pizza & Grill is at: 26 Sidmouth Street, Devizes, SN10 1LD, UK

Opening Hours
Mon-Sat: 4pm-11pm
Closed On Sundays

Website

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Massimo’s; Locale Pizza Paradiso

Talking Pizza today, why? Why not?

Who remembers BT’s friends & family scheme in the nineties, reducing call charges for five selected favourite phone numbers? If you didn’t submit your favs, BT would select them on your behalf based on calls to the number you made the most. Mine, living in Swindon at the time, I’ll confess, went: 1. my mum and dad, 2. my best mate, and 3. Domino’s Pizza. Four may’ve been a girlfriend, it’s dubious but not impossible!

Some years later I moved to Marlborough, where given Ask, Pizza Express and so many others operate today, you couldn’t get a pizza for love nor money. Enter the incredible, if slightly hazardous, Fronkie Fritzheimer, a legend in his own time. From his own kitchen and later progressing to working out of the football club, a move only the fire brigade grumbled about, he serviced Marlborough’s pizza lovers with, darn it, some of the most heavenly pizzas to have blessed my lips.

Fronkie on the move in the late 90s.

I posted on a Marlborough Facebook group, to see if bods recall his presence, or if I dreamed it, and much to my delight, while Fronkie moved to pastures new some years ago, his memory is stamped as firmly in Marlborough’s cultural history as the Earl of Cardigan. From an A4 photocopied leaflet we’d regularly phone our order, and some weeks after his arrival, the delivery operative arrived at our door with complimentary desserts. “Between you and the rugby club,” they thanked us without jest, “are our best customers yet!” We were honoured, proud we ate as much pizza as an entire rugby club!

My case study justified; trust, I know a good pizza when I see/smell or taste one, from a distance of anything up to three hundred yards. With Fronkie fertig, me now living in the Vizes, and Domino’s, face it, is an acquired taste, there was a social media much ado about nothing concerning news of Pizza Express closing in town, which left me wondering why. I am sorry to hear the news for the sake of the staff, but with mixed reviews in the comments, some moaning of the loss is bemusing to me, and I’d wager to anyone else who has sampled a Massimo pizza.

Pizza Express closing is not the end of the world, as overpriced as the mighty Dominos anyway, unless with the latter you take out an offer, where you’re bundled with a pot of watery coleslaw or barely-cooked fries which droop like an impotent greasy baboon’s todger! I’ve moved on from Domino’s, as you can see by my unpolished comparison, I’ve matured.

No, no, no; Massimos will cost you no more, but it is a house of quality, and I guarantee you’ll taste the difference, heck, you’ll smell the difference through the box! If it wasn’t such a generous portion and the sort of taste you have to savour, making it filling, I’d probably have eaten the box too.

You Beauty!

Look, see here, this is no advertorial, they’ve no idea I’m writing this, much to their surprise. Buying local and all that aside, Massimo makes one tasty, fresh pizza, with topping to die for and even the crust is moreish. He’s undoubtedly stolen my homegrown crown from Fronkie. And lockdown is not stopping them, takeaway is available. It’s a crying shame there’s a ristorante left unopened until a better day, a day I was waiting for until I wrote a review for them, but sadly seems we’ve lost the immediate opportunity once more.

So, think this not as a review, do I look like, Jay Rayner? Actually, don’t answer that. Just saying, I love a Massimo’s pizza, the family does, I’d wager Devizions-in-know do. Treat yourself, there’s a full menu to takeaway, the lasagne, ah, the lasagne, speaks for itself. You can call them 01380 724007, message them on Facebook, or, there’s a little bell at the door in Swan Yard, just ring it when they’re open, 5-8:30pm. They’re fantastically welcoming and will bring you takeaway Ring Donuts, Nutella Donuts, Cartoccio with sweet Ricotta filled, Nutella Croissants, any two for three quid… whoa, I apologise; getting a tad over-excited. But, right, the guy won the coveted Gold Star for 2020 for his own Napoletano sauce; how much more convincing do you need?!

hot dang!
@ The Southgate