Several years ago, when Fabwyck first dwelt in the capital, a take away leaflet of a different sort popped through the letterbox. It wasn't the usual garish and brash result of cheap printing deals. It was long, slim, the green of a soft fragrant leaf and the chic minimal typeface professed to hold the key to the perfect thin Italian pizza (albeit within a certain postcode).
This, faithful reader, even in the London of the Nineties with foddie-ism awakening in the hearts and minds of Londoners, was a bold and courageous statement. Pizza is international for better or worse. One night Fabwyck and a friend decided to challenge the leaflet to do its best and ordered an 18" wonder.
The outcome?
The mists of time float around extraneous narrative detail, the weather, the time of year, the waiting, the delivery boy's smile (no doubt he had one) and leave only the jewel in the crown.
The pizza.
It was wide. It was vinyl thin. The tomato base was freshly cooked, the topping luscious and balanced as only an instinctive and experienced pizzeria can produce. It was soft and crunchie where required and delivered all the promise of its type and more. The flat where I ate it is a faded entry in my address book, the friend long gone from my life, but the memory of that pizza will linger forever like the kiss of a cherished lover.
Why now do I recall this pizza? Tonight, returning home still nourished by the free lunches I'm currently enjoying (today: creamy mushroom risotto, vanilla pannacotta with ginger poached rhubarb), I opened the front door. I saw it at once, slipped under the stodgy white envelopes and plastic wrapped magazines. A long, slim, pale green leaflet bearing one word:
basilico
175 Lavender Hill SW11 5TE
http://www.basilico.co.uk/
Thursday, 27 March 2008
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