One to Watch: Pizza Pilgrims Opening on Boar Lane and £5 Student Pizza
If you love pizza, or in other words, if you don’t have a screw loose, this one is for you. But before delving into the details of what makes their pizza so great (hydroponic basil!), a quick word on the story behind the name “Pizza Pilgrims”.
The brand now has over twenty pizzerias across the UK, but back in 2011, little existed other than two brothers, James and Thom, and their love of Neapolitan pizza. This love has roots in this city we call home, as James worked at the famed Italian restaurant Salvo’s in Headingley while he studied in Leeds. So, these two brothers with a shared passion for pizza did what anybody would do – they flew to the South of Italy, bought a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape Van, and drove the 4,500km back to London. Along the way, they stopped at all destinations for pizza and learned everything they could about the art of making authentic Neapolitan pizza. After a brief stint at London’s Berwick Street Market, in 2013, the brothers opened their first restaurant in Soho, meaning this year marks their tenth birthday party.
Celebrations have stretched across the summer, and the Leeds restaurant brings with it the pinnacle of a tenth birthday party: ice cream quite literally on tap. Better than this, it will be coming from, to quote the press release, “the world’s first full-sized pink flamingo pedalo soft serve gelato shop”. I imagine this pedalo as Barbie Land meeting Naples, in the most beautiful of ways.
But don’t let “The Frozen Flamingo” (as the pedalo has been christened) distract you from how seriously Pizza Pilgrims take, well, Pizza. Now, back to that basil. Working with Harvest London, Pizza Pilgrims developed their very own strain of basil, boosting their pizza’s flavour while reducing their food miles. Their 00 flour comes from a mill in the centre of Naples, and their mozzarella is shipped directly to all their restaurants, again from Naples. Their tomato sauce is made exclusively from Italian tomatoes; the dough is double-fermented over 72 hours.
In other words, their pizza is the real deal, and on the 8th of November, from 12-10 pm, Pizza Pilgrims are giving students an exclusive offer to eat as much pizza as they want in ninety minutes, all for the cost of £5, with a drink included.
For more information on this offer, click here. All aboard The Frozen Flamingo!
