Pizza 1889 – restaurant review

The pizza at Pizza 1889 is in the style of Naples, the southern Italian city that is the birthplace of the margherita. The view from the windows of Pizza 1889 is of a 24-hour Krispy Kreme drive-through in an out-of-town retail park.

Don’t let that put you, however, because this is good pizza made by two experienced Italian chefs in a gas-fired clay oven made by Gozney Ovens in Dorset.

Pizza 1889 makes for an incongruous site within a baby blue coloured converted shipping container taking up half a dozen former spaces in the carpark of Avonmeads Retail Park.

There are only six seats inside Pizza 1889

It’s primarily geared up for takeaways, but inside there are also half a dozen metal bar stools around small window sill-cum-tables; with a compilation-tape worthy soundtrack of bands including The Smiths, Pixies and Radiohead.

The set-up is slick, and one that could soon be rolled out elsewhere, with this Pizza 1889 at Avonmeads the third of a small chain that already has identical shipping containers in Surrey Quays shopping centre in south London and Cambridge Leisure Park.

Bristol of course is already well acquainted with pizzas served this way. Pizzarova was a trailblazer in Wapping Wharf well before the rest of the converted shipping containers that make up the ever-expanding Cargo arrived.

And we are also well acquainted with good pizza too, whether that’s in Bertha’s, Flour & Ash and Bosco.

Pizza 1889 is not up to those standards but it makes for a refreshing difference to see a business like this not afraid to compete for hungry shoppers’ appetites with neighbours who alongside Krispy Kreme also include McDonald’s, Greggs and Costa.

Avoid the temptation of a tuna melt toastie in Costa and pay £5 for a pizzetta of a similar size made right in front of your eyes.

The pizzas at Pizza 1889 are stonebaked in a gas-fired oven

All of the pizzas here are stonebaked, with the margherita (first cooked in Naples in 1889, hence the name of this establishment) costing £4.50 for a pizzetta and £9 for a large; and all of the other pizzas priced at £5 or £10.

From a choice of ten not particularly adventurous options, the No. 6 – tomato, mozzarella and Neapolitan sausage – could have been more generous on the meat, but it was nonetheless a very tasty pizza, with a thin crispy base and good ingredients.

The brownies straight out of the fridge were warmed up and artfully dusted with icing sugar, but remained so cold on the inside that my plastic fork broke while cutting them.

The coffee was also a bit of a let-down. ‘We’ve been around the world, and there’s no coffee like Italian coffee’ said a quote on the cup (also in a shade of baby blue) but my flat white may well have been a babyccino, with no discernible taste of coffee.

But who goes to a pizzeria for brownies and coffee? In its incongruous surroundings, Pizza 1889 is well-worth a post-shop pitstop.

Pizza 1889, Avonmeads Retails Park, St Philip’s Causeway, Bristol, BS2 0SP
07519 654674

www.pizza1889.com