Not long ago, something caught my eye on my twitter timeline between the bitter political squabbling that fills much of it. A new pizza had been crowned the best around in some awards show – already, that is my interest piqued. But then the extra nugget that it was vegan really caught my attention. I’m not vegan, or even vegetarian, but I’m trying to limit my intake of meat when I can, and so welcome the vast leaps and bounds that are being made in those areas.

As luck would have it, a vegan friend of mine works around the corner from Purezza (which you can find in Camden or Brighton). A lunch date was set, and off I went.

The restaurant itself is very appealing. Some seats outside, but it was too chilly for that, so we settled down to order inside, the tables and chairs a homely wooden style. Yasmine was straight on to the chocolate oreo milk shake – I stupidly didn’t try that, but at £6 it had better be pretty damned tasty. She seemed to love it – it wasn’t small, and it lasted about 90-120 seconds before she’d drained it. I had the ginger kombucha, which was lovely, certainly as good as any other brand I’ve had, and I’ve had as many as 3 others. Total expert.

We shared the vegan “cheese” board, at £11.95. This, to me, was not a great start to the meal – of the 4 “cheeses” (based on cashew “milk”), only one was something I’d choose to pay for again, the parmesan-styled effort (top left in this).

The others just weren’t up to much, either on a texture or flavour level. It came with some fancy crackers that, honestly, I didn’t really care for, and two small ramekins with a creamy spread/dip and an oily one. I didn’t get involved much in them other than to quickly taste.

The more I sample vegan and vegetarian food, the more I think that it’s a bad idea to mimic meat and dairy, and a much better approach to just showcase ingredients to reflect their strengths. Shoehorning plant-based ingredients into mock cheeses or fake meats… it rarely ends well in my experience. I guess the argument is that technology will get there in the end, and these are the stepping stones to get there.

Not a great start – but I was here for the pizza, and those that were arriving at other tables looked fantastic.

We both ordered the award-winning Parmigiana Party – fried aubergine, plant-based mozzarella, tofu sausage, tomato sauce, basil. This wasn’t a million miles away from the winning pizza at the 2017 London Pizza Festival , so I had high hopes for a real comfort-blanket of a pizza.

It looks great. The sourdough base is excellent, the crusts rising an encouraging amount round the edge, and with plenty of flavour. I really should have taken more pics from when I’d started getting stuck into the pizza, but you get the idea, and the fact that I was too busy shovelling it into my face tells it’s own story. This is a tasty pizza. The tomato is excellent, and the various toppings work well, although personally I found the tofu sausage a bit pointless – which takes us back to my earlier point. There’s surely a tastier, better ingredient to put in here that isn’t pretending to be a meat product? Take these off and the pizza would lose nothing. Replace them with something interesting and it could lift the whole thing up a level.

The “mozzarella” stuff melted well, although wasn’t really comparable to mozzarella in my view, in flavour or mouthfeel – more like thin slices of an incredibly mild cheddar I’d say. I didn’t really notice it at the time, but I do have a bit of a pet peeve of people being stingy with basil like this, if a pizza deserves one leaf, it surely deserves a few? Hell – the menu says “topped with basil leaves”… But that is nitpicking really. The garlic mayo we got to dip the crusts in was lovely.

Is it the best pizza around? No.

I am very surprised it won this award – it’s not even the best vegan pizza I’ve had this year (Jack To The Future at Yard Sale is my best, closely followed by the Club Mexicana effort at Radio Alice). And it’s not as good as the parmigiana pizza that I mentioned earlier, which you can get at Adommé in Streatham. I’m curious to know what it was up against, and the degree to which it’s being vegan impacted the ratings – I can’t help but suspect it was rated on a different scale to it’s competitors.

This all makes it sound like this is going to be a negative review – that’s not the case. This is a good pizza, if a little overpriced at £12.95. But I’d happily go back and eat here again. It’s just that, as someone who is fine eating dairy and meat, I’m not convinced that a pizza with fake meat and fake cheese on it is the best way forward, given where food technology is currently. It’s not quite there yet I’d say. But for a vegan convert seeking some old comforts, I can see why this would hold a lot of appeal.

The long and short of it – this is a good pizza, but no more than that. At a time when there are dozens of pizzerias serving great pizza, I’m more than a little surprised that this won the award it did, but it’s great that vegan pizza is in the frame for such things.

Rating – 7/10

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