Pizza Express Sheffield: Christmas menu combines perfect pizza with festive flavours

Tis the season to indulge yourself and enjoy some special food and drink and, with that in mind, Pizza Express have launched a new Christmas menu – and it’s absolutely delicious. I was kindly invited by the chain Italian restaurant to try some of the new limited edition dishes, and they exceeded all expectations.

I attended the venue at St Paul’s Place, Sheffield city centre, with my partner Tom and we both loved our meals. Tom had never eaten at Pizza Express before but he said he would be eager to return because he enjoyed it so much.

For starters, we each had the Pizza Express staple that is the dough balls. Tom had the festive edition – dough balls in blankets (£7.45) –which were wrapped in crisp pancetta, with sage, gran milano cheese and a honey and mustard dip. He devoured them, calling them a yummy inside out bacon sandwich. As a vegetarian, I had the loaded pesto version (£7.25) which is happily available all year round.

For mains, we each had a pizza that’s on the menu for the festive season only. I had the romana mushroom and truffle pizza (£16.45), featuring mixed mushrooms, buffalo mozzarella with truffle oil. It was described as ‘luxurious’ and that’s exactly the word I would use. The cheese was extremely generous, and I loved the rich and fragrant rosemary and truffle oil. There’s no tomato on the base, so these flavours were really able to shine and I loved it.

Tom had the romana porchetta (£17.25), described as an Italian Christmas feast of slow-cooked pulled pork with fennel and herbs, along with pancetta, potato, mozzarella, garlic oil, sage and gran milano cheese on a béchamel sauce base. He declared this to be the best pizza he’d ever eaten, adding that it was beautiful and very moreish.

On to desserts. Tom went back to dough balls – but the sweet version – specifically the loaded snowball dough balls (£7.45), which are topped with white chocolate sauce, dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. I had the snowflake brownie (£7.95), a classic chocolate treat made with double belgian chocolate. It was served warm and topped with seasonal white chocolate snowflakes, vanilla gelato and chocolate sauce. Both dessert dishes were heavenly, melted in the mouth and were quickly eaten because of how yummy they were.

This was accompanied by two festive cocktails – the jingle bell-ini (£8.25) and the non-alcoholic yule sparkle (£3.85).

If you want a Christmas dinner with all the traditonal festive flavours, but you’re fed up of all the usual food offerings at this time of year, then head to Pizza Express and you’ll be thrilled. The Christmas menu is available in restaurants UK-wide from now until Tuesday, January 2, with some menu items also available for delivery. Our meal was gifted.