Drunk!

We don’t eat out at night. I wish we did, but 4 years experience has taught us that we are much better off slobbed in front of the TV on an evening with our child safely tucked up in bed than we are out wining and dining our way around Cape Town. Ask me out to lunch and I will go anywhere and eat anything with anybody (and I hope my friends don’t take that the wrong way) but all that has now changed with our belated, but happy discovery of Massimo’s Pizza Club in Hout Bay.

Firstly, I have to say (and perhaps they won’t like me for doing so), it isn’t that great a place early on in an evening if you don’t have kids. I remember well my pre-family irritation with noisy, obnoxious brats belting round the dining room, dropping food on the floor, chewing up the sugar packets etc etc. Now, I try and be more tolerant, but I would definitely suggest that if you don’t have kids, then you should book for 8pm or later.

Because Massimo and Tracy have done the cleverest thing – they share premises with Scarecrows café which by day is one of the most kid-friendly venues around with jungle gyms, ride-on toys and other play areas. Having 2 restaurants sharing one set of rent is a very intelligent idea and if it means they can keep their prices as good as they are, then I’m all for it.

Second word of warning here – if you like South African-style pizzas, don’t come here either. This is pizza for pizza purists – people who appreciate proper buffalo mozzarella, the thinnest of thin bases and genuine imported Italian meats so if you think a pizza should be a gloopy, cheese-laden, stroke-fest then you’re not going to be happy here. The pizzas were utterly blissful with plenty of delicious toppings and we were completely full afterwards. Slightly surprisingly, they don’t do kiddies sized pizzas, which wasn’t a big problem on this occasion as the two kids in our party shared a normal-sized one, but might be when we come back on our own (hey – I can eat 2 pizzas if I have to!). They were also slightly short on the ice cream stakes as well with only 3 flavours offered and one of them running out between placing our order and the waitress making it into the kitchen, but it didn’t really matter that much – the pizza’s the thing and the thing was good.

We finished the evening with some fun gimmicks which sent us all off smiling – igniting alcohol-soaked sugar cubes and downing chocolate cups filled with liqueur. The wine list is short, but fairly-priced and if we’d been drinking wine that evening, then I would have been more than happy with the choices. So I guess the message is – if you like pizza and you’ve got kids, then definitely go. If you like pizza and don’t have kids, then still go, but later on in the evening .  And if you still want the gloop-fest, then phone Call-a-Pizza and stay at home. Unlike me – I’m now officially in the Club! Ciao.