La Pizzeria Ristorante Reviewed

I WAS once in Wakefield for an interview as a bookshop manager.

Wakefield is on a hill. As I walked up the main street, Kirkgate, I glanced to my right and charging up a steep alley straight at me were two massive rugby league types.

A side salad looked like it had been recently regurgitated by a cow from its last two mouthfuls because the cow dimly suspected the greenery had been sprayed with weedkiller

At first I thought, as true Tykes, they'd sniffed me out as a Lancastrian. Then I realised they were chasing a big dirty rat, shouting "Kill the fucker!" in an accent so broad you would have needed a guide and a team of huskies to cross it.

The rat darted into a drain and escaped. It was clearly gone, but the men grimly kicked at the rim of the drain for a good twenty seconds.

Pointless. 

On another occasion I had a meal in a Cafe Rouge.

Even more pointless and far less entertaining.

Now we have La Pizzeria Ristorante on High Street in the Northern Quarter (NQ) to help us precisely locate the true north of pointlessness.

This is a temporary restaurant, or if you bloody insist a 'pop up'. It occupies a space above the Market Restaurant, the one time eighties pioneer leading the vanguard of aspirational food and drink into the semi-derelict, rag-trade, ragamuffin, Northern Quarter. Readers with long memories will recall the sunshine days of pudding clubs, Mary-Rose Edgecombe and Peter and Anne O'Grady.  

The Market - gun for hire

Now to help balance the books - one assumes - The Market has become a gun for hire for wandering multi-nationals with more money than sense who wish to break out of niche markets into the wider world.

The first of these breakouts came from Kahlua in March. There was maybe a tidsy bit of justification for this brand to hijack the Market. The Kahlúa Coffee and Cocktail House was 'inspired by the heritage of Veracruz, Mexico'. Now there's nothing a NQ slacker likes better than to fall in love with something exotic sounding from the developing world. Makes them feel tingly inside and 'in touch'. Same goes for me. That's why I went to Wakefield for a job.

Lovely upstairs room - maybe a bit too cute for frozen pizza

But letting the Market to La Pizzeria Ristorante is surely a leap of faith too far. We're not talking the hot tropics here but Iceland. And not 'the land of fire and ice' either, rather the modestly scaled frozen food supermarket on a street near you.

Yes, Manchester, lock up your daughters and restrain your sons, Dr Oetker the frozen pizza giant all the way from Bielefeld in Germany has opened a temporary restaurant until 7 September. Forget Rogan and his vain and fey food at The French, this is the real deal. This is fine frozen fare. 

Dr Oetker you see, would appear to be an optimist. 

The restaurant is selling the genuine article, the actual, untarted up, frozen pizzas you get in the shops. It's doing this as though they have any culinary value.

It appears Herr Doktor believes the typical journey of his pizzas from freezer cabinet to the gullet of people who think five a day is a very low number for vodka shots can be transformed by preparing said pizzas in a restaurant and serving them with some greenery and maybe a beer - or in my case a coke in a plastic cup.

This isn't going to happen. The pizzas taste exactly like they're frozen Dr Oetker pizzas; bitty little things, easily overdone at the edges with low grade ingredients on top.

I had one called the 'Ristorante Speciale' with vile pepperoni. It tasted synthetic, like I was being made to eat a plastic pizza from a primary school play box. There were things on there that looked like mushrooms but if so they'd had a very hard life. A side salad seemed to have been recently regurgitated by a cow from its last two mouthfuls because the cow dimly suspected the leaves had been sprayed with weedkiller.

Synthetically challenged, a bit tatty round the edges

To be fair to the pizza it couldn't help being bad, it was in its nature; nor could the chef have helped, unless he'd worked hard to completely reconstruct it with fresh ingredients which he couldn't because that's not the point.

The point after all is promotional, to encourage people - when suddenly struck on how shockingly low they are on processed, ready meals - to think: "I must run out and purchase one of those bitty little Dr Oetker pizzas, easily overcooked at the edges, and with low grade ingredients on top." 

Right. Yeah.

At least my lunch was cheap. The £4 receipt for pizza, salad and drink will definitely be the lowest food and drink bill ever presented to Confidential's harassed Master of Expenses, David Boyd (aka Gordo and Schofield's Gluttony Cushion). He might faint. He might frame it.

Meanwhile children's meals are £3.50, evening adult meals for three courses and a drink are £10. These prices are reasonable aside from one thing: the pizzas are horrible. 

It's really hard to fathom this one. 

I'm fairly sure the considerable expense taken to create this temporary restaurant in the NQ is a waste of effort and unlikely to lead to an upsurge in either sales or reputation for Dr Oetker's empire - an empire of ten billion Euros turnover FYI. 

So Dr Oetker doesn't profit from La Pizzeria Ristorante, the reputation of the Market Restaurant suffers and the only customers who gain are those who don't like food - or prefer a deal to food.

The whole exercise is as pointless as chasing a rat down a drain and then kicking the wall after it's escaped.

But it's not as much fun and the rat, should you catch it, would probably taste better than the pizzas.

I hope the Market Restaurant returns to its senses soon and creates a menu that fills its tables upstairs and down with real diners and real food rather than hosting gimmicks such as this. 

You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter@JonathSchofield or connect via Google+

ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.  

La Pizzeria Ristorante, 104 High St, Northern Quarter, M4 1HQ

Rating: 7/20

Food: 2/10 (Salad 2, pizza 2)
Service: 3/5 (The David Luis look-alike waiter was a very pleasant chap)
Ambience: 2/5

The menu - ooh delicious