Pizza Express, in an effort to attract the calorie conscious, are now serving pizzas with the centre surgically removed. In order to keep the meal under 500 calories, they cut out this middle section and replace it with salad leaves. They also deprive you of lard too, as the actual pizza bit is basically tomato bread peppered with dots of cheese.

Yesterday we gave it a try. It wasn’t long before we realised this was just not going to fill us up. We were still utterly starving by the end, and ironically, felt like asking for the missing piece back…? I’d have paid the difference in price, only there wasn’t any. If anything they charge you more for this absence of pizza. It seems less is quite literally more!

Nat ordered some extra salad dressing (laden with calories) to try and fill the calorie hole. I just drank coffee and tried to pretend I was full (as is the norm when attempting to eat healthily). Eventually I gave in and ordered garlic butter dough balls, which are basically the missing piece, cut into even tinier pieces, and a further £4.  Calorie deficit replenished; bank balance well and truly ravenous.

Today’s Pizza blog is the first in a series of reviews on places to brainstorm for creatives. We’ll be grading them on two levels; one being overall tastiness and value for money. Two, how conducive to actually doing work they are – hereafter pretentiously known as ‘creative ambiance’.

Pizza express was good in terms of creative ambiance yesterday, because we got to watch a whole shoreditch graffiti installation take place before our eyes (more on that later) while we thought of ideas. So for that we give it an A star. But for tastiness and combating hunger it gets a disappointing D.