Pizza Orcs and the Pizza Fires of Mordor – Number 379 Gigi

How did we get all the way over here?

Well, it turns out that if it’s your birthday, you can eat where you want to, can’t you?

Really? But the only thing we’ve got going for us is our dogged dedication to numerical order. Without that it’s chaos, we’re just another review site.

It’s my birthday.

I know…

And we’re eating wherever the hell I want. Alright?

Well ok, of course we are.

So after a bit of pressy giving and receiving, here we are at Gigi for a hastily arranged birthday celebration. The proper one is being rolled into a week-long festival of welcome for the Davos – dear friends and English gentlefolk who will need us to chaperone them about the countryside and introduce them to some serious eating and drinking.

Our party for the evening includes the Stropolina who is eager to be part of the quest. I have just got off a plane from Wagga Wagga, so by the time we set off at 8:30 I’m pretty keen for a feed of any kind, even if we do have to walk halfway to St Peters.

Gigi has been floating in and out of Strop’s field of vision ever since we started the quest. It was recommended to her by Stef as The-Best-Pizza-In-Newtown, “and she knows about pizza, she’s a proper Italian … both parents!”. I’m not entirely sure that The-Best-Pizza-In-Newtown is setting the bar terribly high, but I’m always up for pizza.

It’s 9 o’clock by the time we get to number 379, but Gigi is still abuzz with a youngish trendy crowd. The decor is cool and hip, with lots of exposed brickwork, ducts and a distressed concrete floor. We squeeze into a table near the front and prepare to be impressed. As we peruse the menus the Stropolina notes how good looking all the floor staff are and Strop agrees. They don’t look anything special to me but perhaps I am not their target audience, and anyway I’m busy watching the pizza station and the wood-fired oven which are located in the middle of the restaurant. It is manned by four very serious looking blokes – shaved heads, tatts and scowls aplenty – it’s obviously serious business on the pizza frontline. The Stropolina decides that these are the pizza orcs and they’re stoking the fires of Mordor – she had just been to see the Hobbit so we make allowances.

One of the attractive young waitress takes our order: patate, the birthday girl’s favourite, capricciosa and gamberi e rucola pizzas, as well as a Peroni and two of their finest house Shiraz. Oh, and there was a salad in there as well.

Then the conversation turns to the picture of an attractive young woman making a pizza that adorns a wall of the restaurant. Is she Gina Lollabrigida we wonder? Was she in a movie call Gigi? Is she, in fact, a kind of 1950s Italian Nigella? In the 1950s there was only the Galloping Gourmet. No, that was the 1960s. What was his name? No, its not Gina Lollabrigida, it’s Sophia Loren. Was she in a movie called Gigi? No. There was a movie called Gigi, but it was set in Paris, not Rome. Or Naples. It had Maurice Chevalier in it. So what movie was Sophia Loren in that featured a pizza? It doesn’t matter, she looks dead sexy behind a pizza anyway. As of course, do Strop and the Stropolina when our pizzas arrives.

After a bit of manoeuvring we fit it all on the table and then settle down to eat. The pizzas are good. The toppings are very good but I find the crusts, especially the patate, a bit soggy in the middle. Everyone else thinks they are fine so maybe it is just me. Perhaps I let Gigi’s reputation be built up too much. Anyway we eat it all except for a couple of foil clad slices of capricciosa to take away for lunch the next day. On the way out the door we pick up gelatos in cones to lick as we wander home. The gelatos are great, not many flavours, but what they do, they do extremely well. Especially the strawberry. And the chocolate. The lemon wasn’t bad either.

Next time we’ll be back to numerical order I hope, but nothing is guaranteed as we will be escorting the Davos then.