Pizza Express bids for breakfast market with ‘new generation’ restaurant

Pizza Express is set to serve breakfast for the first time as it opens the first of its “new generation” restaurants in Richmond next month.​

The restaurant, which will open its doors on 21 October, will act as a ‘living lab’, with a number of new features, including a kiosk, a breakfast menu and monthly pizza specials.

Those that work will be rolled out across the chain’s 370 restaurants, and, the chain says, ‘define the Pizza Express of the future’.

Central to the design of the new restaurant will be a Neapolitan-style kiosk, which will open out onto the street. Open from 8.45am, it will serve a range of breakfasts and baked goods, along with the monthly special pizzas and traditional Italian ‘po-boy’ sandwiches, made with hot bread, rocket, tomato, mozzarella and pancetta.

Menu​

The menu will feature the new combination of Dough Balls and Nutella alongside Pizettini Aperitivos, or mini pizzas, and miniature cupcake versions of the restaurant’s chocolate fudge cake.

Pizza Express has hired Liliana Tamberi, owner of Food Lab in Islington, to work with executive chef Antonio Romani to develop the new dishes.

Her additions to the menu include Grape Bread, Italian Jam Tarts, Italian Merenghina, a meringue pastry, and Mini Croissants.

The monthly pizza specials will also be added to the main restaurant menu and will feature seasonal produce.

The first, to be rolled out next month, will toast Enzo Apicella, the designer of the first Pizza Express restaurant, with a topping of ricotta, new potatoes, rosemary, onions and chilli.