We head to street corner pub where the pizza is said to be ‘better than in Rome’
In a poll of the county’s best pizzerias, The Flower Pot in Maidstone came top, with one fan saying its offerings were better than you’d get in the Italian capital. Reviewer Ed McConnell went to find out how it compared...
On a miserable Wednesday night – the setting for most of these reviews – I found myself in one of my favourite watering holes gazing up at a screen displaying “Pizza Club 50% off pizza every Wednesday” against a fetching pepperoni background.
The sign faded to reveal an equally tempting list of several real ales.
Is there a better combination in the world of gastronomy than pizza and beer? No, of course not, so let’s crack on.
I’m here, not just to gorge myself on pizza on expenses, but because when KentOnline conducted a snap National Pizza Day poll to find the best slice in Kent, The Flower Pot in Sandling Road, Maidstone came top. One man said it was “better than anything [he’d] eaten in Rome.” Quite the claim!
We’d travelled through sludge to get here, parked in a scratchy bush along a one-way road and trudged, heads bowed, through icy sheets of rain to reach the painted green door.
But while the water gurgled in the gutter and pooled in the potholes, the Trevi Fountain it was not. Rome 1: Maidstone 0.
The first rule of Pizza Club is... buy a pint and wait.
So I did, and then another, as the pizza oven was, predictably, in high demand.
Midway into the first crystal clear pint of Fyne Ales’ Jarl (£4.45) my pizza partner and I had settled on a sweet potato & blue cheese (£12.50), vegetarian (£12.50) and duck (£12).
I reckon this is decent pricing, especially for a good pint, especially when it’s half price Pizza Club night, so Maidstone at this point pulls level with the Italian capital.
The pizzas would be one hour, I was told, and actually turned up after 58 minutes – punctuality which, from my experience of The Eternal City, sees Maidstone pull in front. Sure, it’s a long time to wait, but then again it is half price Pizza Club night. We’d arrived at around 6.30pm (food is served from 6pm) to a pub which was already pretty busy where we only got a table thanks to fortunate timing but, as our pizzas cooked, the population swelled and the volume and atmosphere soared to the point a rain-soaked traveller stumbling in might have mistaken it for a Friday night.
There are two parts to The Flower Pot, the livelier section where the bands play, pool sharks circle and jukebox jockeys battle, and the bit up some steps surrounding the main body of the bar where the boring folk, of whom I count myself a proud member, talk about hops
and spreadsheets.
In this regard the pub has achieved the inprobable, incorporating the look and feel of a backstreet boozer and the cosy fire-side chat vibe of a rural local
without conflict. By contrast if you were to fly to Rome in the hope of avoiding romance, for example, you’d find it impossible and that probably would grate. Rome 1: Maidstone 3.
As it was starting to look like a rout the first of our pizzas arrived, offering hope perhaps to any Italians seeking to win back a point, but so did a poodle in a cool coat which was better than any dog I saw on my trip to Italy. Rome 1: Maidstone 4.
The vegetarian pizza in front of us was coupled with my second pint, a tasty Lowline stout (£4.45), and was declared, perhaps prematurely, by my companion to be the best pizza she’d eaten there.
It wasn’t my favourite and I thought the courgette could have been seasoned a bit but any concerns were swiftly eased by the arrival of the knock-out sweet potato.
This pizza is as good as anything I had in Rome but I should declare here I thought the ones in the Italian capital weren’t as good as those you can get on the country’s coast.
The duck pizza now arrived and I was feeling in good shape to polish it off alone, but my pizza partner, a vegetarian who had earlier warned me off eating too much of “her pizzas” so as to leave room for mine, went feral, scraping bits of bird off here, carving out meat-free-looking corners there.
A sad fall from grace for her but probably a good thing in the long run as by the final few mouthfuls truth be told I was struggling, shovelling in squares of dough through drawn-out gulps of Fyne Ales’ Double Disco #2 (£4.85).
It was good by the way, but any more extensive review would be tainted by the way it was eaten. If I’m to be unbiased you cannot say the pizzas at The Flower Pot are “better than those in Rome” or, really, than those at the excellent Vesuvius Restaurant on the other side of town, but, to be fair, I don’t think they ever intended to be.
What I would say is that they are great, well-priced (especially on half price Pizza Club night) and the perfect accompaniment to a nice mid-week pint at a pub which is flourishing - even on a Wednesday!
Out of five:
Food: Not better than Rome but I could eat the sweet potato every day *****
Drink: The best choice in town *****
Decor: Proper pub with modern twists like the screens **** 1/2
Staff: One reassured me a tangy end-of-barrel pint “wouldn’t kill me” but was happy to replace it *****
Price: The beer was four-star value. Thanks to half price Pizza Club night the food was five-starworthy ****