We were in the area coming from the Experimental Food Society Spectacular so decided to tick off one of my to-do list restaurants. Pizza East has been on my list for over a year! so I’d forgotten the reason that I wanted to go there – heh heh. I think I remember being attracted by the promise of American style pizza maybe? Or the fact it was located in Shoreditch – whatever the reasons here we were for Saturday lunch.

The space inside is vast, but somehow there were still people waiting for a table when we left. It was lucky we’d arrived relatively early for lunch so we were pretty much sat straight down.

There is a lot more to the Pizza East menu than pizza though that was what we had come for. But first, we enjoyed some starters – a gorgeous Fig, Honeycomb and Ricotta Bruschetta and a fairly average Calamari. The calamari was small in portion (£7.50!) but the Bruschetta was worth every penny. I would have happily ordered another!

Moving on to our pizzas – Pat had a Ground beef, scarmorza, dried tomatoes (Pat was tempted by the fact the scarmoza was smoked) while I opted for a San Daniele, tomato, ricotta, pesto, ruby chard (my choice was purely for the pesto!) Our pizzas, when they arrived, were attractive enough for our neighbours to ask us what they were!

Sadly the pizzas looked better than they tasted. Well, Pat’s pizza was pretty good, but I should have known that, my love of pesto notwithstanding, the prosciutto on my pizza was going to ruin it for me. If it had been cooked in the oven along with the rest of the pizza that might have been a different story because then it would have become like a toasted bacon – but after a while of eating the pizza lack of strong flavour was too much and I couldn’t finish the pizza. PS both pizzas had way too much of a base versus ingredient ratio to my liking.

Because the menu has lots of stuff beyond the pizza I would probably consider coming again. Its not too bad for value and the service was efficient and friendly. Good vibe as well because of the open space though I could see that it had potential for getting too loud for my liking.