A jazzy delight

Enjoy a slice of pizza as you listen to jazz at Pizza Express

Radhakrishnan, Jazz is not my thing, but I would run a mile ( OK, walk a mile) for pizza with a golden, thin crust smothered in creamy elastic tic cheese and shards of meat. eat.

Jazz@ Pizza a Express, a stylish pizza parlour in Jumeirah Lake Towers, serves what it says on the tin. There’s music to be enjoyed while you bite into soft doughy pies and cheese drizzled with olive oil. And fortunately, this restaurant — with white marble tops, black contemporary couches bathed in dark pink and blue lighting — isn’t pretentious. It’s a place where you can eat pizza with your hand ( but not in a savage- like fashion) or use the knife and fork and still not be judged. But we found there’s more to be enjoyed as we made our way to their Friday brunch.

As soon as we sat down, a bread basket straight from the oven materialised into front of us — go easy on it, after all, you need to leave room for an array of appetizers that will be served with some well- timed breaks. We began with baked feta cheese mushrooms and a chargrilled vegetable antipasto. The union between the roasted button mushrooms and salty, crumbled feta cheese made perfect sense, while the platter filled with grilled Italian aubergine, red and yellow peppers, giant Sicilian olives and tomatoes was like summer on a plate.

But its appeal paled in comparison to the flavourful cozze alla marinara ( mussels in red sauce). Cooked perfectly, the seafood dunked in tomato sauce, garlic and crushed chilli was fiery and flavourful. The warm dough sticks are there to help scoop up all

below, pizza and, Arabizza marinara

from Pizza cozze alla Express,

JLT. the gravy from the plate. Like any brunch, it’s a good idea to pace yourself.

The appetizers were served in miniature format and can be repeated as many times as your heart demands.

What came next was a portion of warm vegetable and goat’s cheese salad and the classic Nicoise salad. The goat’s cheese salad felt slightly repetitive, the warm aubergine, marinated artichoke and tomatoes drizzled in olive oil was reminiscent of the vegetable antipasto that was served during our first leg of our brunchathon.

But all was forgotten when the mains arrived. The brunch is designed in such a way that you can choose either pizza or pasta. My partner and I decided on Arabizza pizza and pasta linguine alla Genovese con pollo. The latter was modified to penne pasta in pesto and cream sauce. The green beans, the new baby potatoes pota and the marinated chicken chic tossed with pasta was creamy, cre not stodgy, sto and the trimmed trim green beans be gave it a good g bite. But Bu your meal isn’t is complete p without having h a slice of the superthin Arabizza pizza with toppings of chicken, mozzarella, mixed peppers, jalapeno ja and olives. olives The thin, charred- h d i in- the- rightplaces crust gave the no- frills pizza a smoky flavour fl and the toppings p were fresh.

What made it all the more m enjoyable was the live liv jazz duo, Johanna/ Sandell, Sa in the background. gro Even to an untrained tra ear, they sounded good. goo

For desserts, it was a trilogy sample menu. There were scoops of freshly made gelato, cheesecake ( cream cheese, crumbly biscuit and fruit coulis) and “chocolate glory”.

Our unanimous vote went to the gelato scoops, Italy’s sweet gift to the world. Those were like tiny parcels of heaven and after those, you are game for pretty much anything. Who said jazz is highbrow?