La Bella Vita

There used to be a pizza restaurant in Bangor called La Bella Vita. It was run by two women and it was pretty reasonable in all senses but the partners eventually fell out and the restaurant didn’t survive too long after one of them departed. Pity because they sold good, honest food – something of a rarity these days. Plus they had a real pizza oven, a small electric barrel-shaped masonry oven that turned out the best pizza bases I ever had. It’s now a noodle restaurant; people say it’s good but I’m probably too old to get excited about noodles. Bangor’s just about to get its first national chain restaurant. We don’t have so much as a Pizza Express. So, what are we getting? You guessed – Wok & Go.

Anyway, this is a prelude to saying to Bella (see previous post) that, yes, you did forget to take the pizza dough with all the bread you baked on the course, and, as you would expect, we ate it yesterday.

I haven’t got many photographs of pizzas because I like them as they’re supposed to be eaten, straight from the oven and it’s a bit rude to Sue to say, go ahead and start, won’t take me a minute to get a snap. But that’s what I did yesterday, (1) because it was a pretty good pizza and, (2) so Bella could see what happened to her dough. It had the remains of the tomato sauce from Saturday’s course, topped with wedges of deep-fried courgettes and mushrooms, a perfect egg surrounded by a good sprinkling of rocket and the cornicione was well brushed with garlic olive oil as it came out of the oven.

Anyway, I uttered the fatal words, “Won’t be a second”, rushed my pizza out into yesterday’s blazing sunshine and positioned the plate on the garden gatepost (an eighteen inch square of thick slate – this is a Bethesda gatepost). A gust of wind blew off my artistically arranged rocket. Scraped it back on during a lull. Switched on the camera, glanced at the screen. It said, “Please enter the current six digit date, the correct time and select the relevant international time-zone” ……
Still, it was not a bad pizza and thank you, Bella, for the use of your dough. That’s two quid off your next course.