Restaurant Review: Pizza Pilgrims, Waterloo

Tristan O’Hana visits the Waterloo site of Pizza Pilgrims to check out the brand’s latest menu collaboration

We can’t go a minute here at Dine Out HQ without receiving more news on the latest collaborations within the sector. Usually, it’s a chef-owner of a restaurant or group welcoming other culinary wizards into their kitchen for one-off evenings or to create a limited-edition menu. 

Recent examples have been Michelin-starred restaurant Osip, run by Merlin Labron-Johnson and hospitality group Smith & Willis, launching a new chef collaboration series, which will see top chefs from around the world cook at the Somerset site this year. Bill’s brought in Poppy ‘Poppy Cooks’ O’Toole on a special spud menu. Galvin Restaurants announced a collaboration series which also spans the entire year. Each update demonstrates the unity and relationships that are so strong within this industry.

I always ponder just how much organisation it must take for these people and businesses to ensure their diaries and visions align in order to utilise the partnerships to the max. In Osip’s case, it is bringing in chefs from overseas – no small feat. I couldn’t help but be impressed then when news of the latest Pizza Pilgrims collab dropped into my inbox. For not only had the Thom and James Elliot-led business revealed a new partnership with a fellow restaurant brand, but they added three more into the mix for good measure.

The end of April saw the Neapolitan-style pizza restaurant team up with hospitality brands Dishoom, Honest Burgers, Pho and Sweet Dee’s Jerk to launch ‘The Great British Crust Comeback’ – a limited-edition pizza crust dipping menu. “That’s an awful lot of dips,” I hear you say. Well, there’s a reason for that.

Top dips

Previous research detailed by Pizza Pilgrims suggests that one in four consumers (25%) can’t eat crusts without a dip, while three-quarters (75%) say they would be more likely to finish them if served with the right sauce. In the release that detailed the collaboration, Pizza Pilgrims estimated that up to 47 tonnes of crusts are wasted each year, the equivalent weight of four London buses.

As the business lives by the motto ‘In Crust We Trust’, the project intended to tackle the nation’s ‘crust issues’ head-on and make the ‘cornicione’ the most exciting part of the plate through the introduction of the Double Dip menu. 

“In Napoli, the crust is the soul of the pizza, and ours is made fresh daily using the best ingredients from the region,” the Elliot brothers tell me. “We started thinking – what if the right dips with some of our hospitality friends could save the nation’s crust-wasting habits?”

I managed to catch the last day of the menu when I popped into the Pizza Pilgrims Waterloo venue at the end of April. Here’s what I found.

A dip for any occasion? 

As you’d expect, having four dip options for one guest is not really the idea – at £2 a pot, I’m told people had been ordering one or two. However, you could get all four for £6, so that’s what I did. It’s worth flagging here that throughout the campaign, Pizza Pilgrims was recognising World Wish Month, a global initiative that raises funds to grant life-changing wishes for critically ill children and their families. Throughout April, the brand doubled its donations from every dip sold. 

Each restaurant brand’s dip represented the tastes and flavours you’d experience from the food in their own sites. The Dishoom Chilli Chutney Dip mixed house mayo with red chilli, garlic, citrus and spices. The Honest Burgers Rosemary Chips Dip blended the same mayo with fresh rosemary, crushed olive oil crisps and salt – recreating the brand’s rosemary salt fries in dip form. The Pho Peanut Sauce featured chilli and garlic, while the Sweet Dee’s Jerk BBQ was a smoky barbecue sauce with a blend of jerk spices. Ranked in order, best to, erm, least best, I’d go with Honest, Sweet Dee’s, Dishoom, Pho. Collaborations are all about having fun with peers, but there’s no getting away from the fact that some of those dips just went well with pizza… and some not so much.

I’m glad Pizza Pilgrims rolled this out though, for not only is it a decent bit of marketing for everyone involved, but it also got me back into one of their restaurants for the first time in years. I can remember the obsession with this business beginning when the Elliots opened their first pizzeria in Soho in 2013. They were leading the market at the time, no question. What’s great is that 13 years and 20-something restaurants later, the pizza is still just as decent as it was when they first arrived on the scene. Not an easy thing to achieve. I mustn’t leave it so long between visits. 

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