/FOOD AND DRINK CITY CENTRE’S SLICE OF RUDY’S IS PIZZA
red chilli to give a sweet bite with plenty of kick and it is outstanding. For me, the best on their menu.
Ancozese (£8.90) is a close second - wild broccoli and Tuscan sausage make perfect bedfellows and prove that any more than a meaningful twosome is just for show.
The salame pizza (£7.90) comes laden with strips of smoked meat that melt into the pizza, gleefully folded up and rammed in to our gobs like sloppy newspapers being impatiently shoved through a letterbox. Ungainly, but so satisfying. Craft beer - Shindigger IPL (£4.50) - and a gin fizz (£5.90) are first class pizza eating libations.
On the sweet side, chocolate torte is decent, and it may be the Yorkshire in me, but £4 for two scoops of ice cream - however good it is - lets the previously price savvy menu down. The afogatto is better value at the same price and gives you the caffeine kick you might need to lift you from a dough-based haze.
That said, five people fed and watered for £72 is excellent value and the original standards are being upheld.
Service can occasionally be a bit absent and middle distance. It starts as charming and ends up being slightly annoying. It will get slicker, you hope.
Rudy’s is an eminently expandable brand - and only a fool would think MM have picked it up to lovingly replicate it just the once, as some sort of tribute act on the other side of town.
No, Rudy’s is undoubtedly set for bigger things - and as long as they keep the place true to Jim and Kate’s original vision, they should be confident about the brand making that often troubled leap from fanatic-laden indie to (whisper it) successful mini chain.