Meeting Extreme Pizza's Philip Martin

A few weeks ago, Rebecca and myself had lunch in Rathmines’ newest restaurant, Extreme Pizza. Any of you who are following Consumed will remember that I was excited about finally trying out the menu I’d read so much about prior, but ultimately left disappointed with what had been served up. There’s no need to elaborate, the pizza we ate on that day just didn’t live up to our expectations. I wrote up a review summing up as much, and that was effective the end of that for all intents and purposes.

Unbeknownst to myself, it would take Philip Martin – owner of Extreme Pizza and effective master of the franchise on this side of the Atlantic – only a couple of days to come across my review and get in touch with me regarding it. How he did so is still a mystery to me, but there’s a big online campaign behind this particular restaurant (with Philip himself at the helm) so it may well have been brought to his attention through Extreme Pizza’s growing fan base. Regardless, he not only took any criticisms I had on board but was also kind enough to invite me for a chat about the food itself, to see where I thought the problem lay. A week or so later and there I was, back in Extreme Pizza much earlier than I’d intended to be!

And on that small note, let me give you a little insight into my philosophy on bad dining experiences. We all have them, whether or not it’s to do with service, the restaurant itself or a simple matter of the food on offer not appealing to your tastes. They happen, and in many cases we all immediately decide never go back to X, Y or Z eatery again after only a handful of hiccups on their part. Personally, I think this attitude is a terrible one to take when it comes to dining out. It’s important to remember that most restaurants are extremely dynamic places; service, atmosphere and the food are almost never the same on any given day or at any given hour and what you eat is, of course, a mere fraction of the entire menu. If you thought one single item from said menu was sub-par, it’s entirely reasonable to imagine that it may just have been an off day where the cook and that particular dish are concerned. We are, after all, only human and this applies to everybody who is working an ever worked in a restaurant. To expect comparatively consistent perfection – even proportionately – is a fool’s errand. To complain with conviction when you don't get it is even worse. Instead, expect the best that can be done and, as you should do in general throughout life, throw in a bit of empathy for good measure. In a nutshell, don’t rule out giving restaurants a second chance if one or two things go wrong! I never do, and Extreme Pizza was no exception to this. The only difference here was that instead of going of my own volition, Philip was inviting me back personally.

Of course, I wasn’t visiting for a meal this time. No, what had been arranged instead was a sampling plate of select ingredients from the pizzas Rebecca and I had ordered the last time and a half n’ half pizza from the menu. Philip and myself talked about food and the business, I tried the ingredients and gave what I thought was the advice best suited to the problems I’d experienced with the previous two pizzas. The main issue beforehand had been the thickness of the base which ended up dominating the pizza, however this time around I was introduced to Extreme Pizza’s wholemeal base; more flavoursome yet considerably thinner without pushing into Neapolitan thickness territory. It yielded space for the flavours of the pizza toppings themselves to shine, and altogether worked far better than the plain version we’d eaten the last time.

As for the ingredient platter, it raised more questions for me about how the cooking process affected good tasting, fresh ingredients. Philip takes pride in how he sources those that go into his pizzas, with a meticulous selection process going into each one. He sources the salami himself, with two varieties currently on offer. The tomato sauce used in some of the pizza recipes tasted fantastic, and I pointed out that Rebecca’s pizza had suffered from a lack of it. Other customers had done the same, but Philip puts this down to a matter of taste at the end of the day; some like more sauce, some don’t. I’d still say that more could definitely be used, if only in tandem with the normal base.

What was also brought to my attention that hadn’t been during our last visit was Philip’s enthusiasm for micro breweries; small beer and ale producing companies a that, in general, create a much more refined drink than what you’d get from the bigger multi-nationals. They feature heavily on Extreme Pizza’s chalk board, with Curim in particular standing out as one I recognised. It’s great to see serious, positive backing to local companies like this, especially from restaurants that you wouldn’t normally expect to provide it! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to push my luck enough to get a sample, but when I do go back I most definitely will.

Yes, if I hadn’t already made it clear then let me make it even clearer: I will indeed soon be returning to Extreme Pizza for another meal. Under normal circumstances I’d definitely have been a little slower to, but here we have a restaurant that’s run by somebody with a genuine passion for what he does; enough to see my and Rebecca’s negative dining experience not an irreversible disaster, but rather an opportunity to make amends and show off what he can offer instead. That alone is reason enough to bump it up into second chance salon, never mind that what I tried when meeting him tasted much better! Even if, somehow, the food still then isn’t my cup of tea for round two, I still have great respect for what Philip showed me in how he approaches running a restaurant. Any up and coming catering enthusiasts would be hard pressed to find a better role model. And if you happen to be just plain interested in a chat about pizza, he’s got you covered there too!

Extreme Pizza (closed)

Over the past week, there’s been something of a pizza binge going down in the Jones household. It kicked off on a lazy Sunday evening that involved one of Tesco’s finest pizzas (with the addition of some much-needed feta cheese!), quickly followed a trip to a Pizza Hut takeaway on Stephanie’s request the following night. Strike three came after Áine had invited us out to eat on Tuesday, whereupon it soon became apparent that it was gourmet pizza she was after. We went straight to Hell and found everything we needed. Hell on Aungier street that is; a gourmet pizza bar that – up until checking out the menu that very night – I had always thought to be just a takeaway with a catchy name! I’ll be revisiting that particular eatery in the not-too-distant future, but for now this review is concerned with how we ended the pizza binge: at Extreme Pizza in Rathmines.

For those of you who don’t know, Extreme Pizza is a relatively small American franchise that originated from California. No prizes for guessing what they deal in, if you’re looking for a burger or bucket of chicken then look elsewhere my friend! Stateside, you’d call the kind of pizza they serve ‘Californian style’; here, we simply refer to it as ‘gourmet pizza’. You know, the kind that makes you think ‘now that surely wouldn’t work as a topping?’ That kind. It followed closely on the coat tails of smoothie and bagel bars in the mid naughties, with Millstone on Dame Street amongst the pioneers.

Extreme Pizza eventually caught wind of our nation’s recent embracing of all foods chic, and in December of last year they chose to open their very first international branch on the emerald isle. Slow as ever, I only learned of this development just a few days ago courtesy of a friend joining their fan page, and in keeping with the week’s running pizza theme it had to be visited, never mind the fact that I’d oogled over their menu some months beforehand!

Roll on a sunny Saturday, some truly incredible bruschetta and lemonade in Ranelagh (I didn’t get Rathmines and Ranelagh confused again, don’t believe anything you hear!) market and we eventually made it to Extreme Pizza’s rather busy corner location.

Surprisingly, the ‘busy’ seemed to have stopped at the corner and outside of Extreme Pizza’s door. To sum it up, we entered an empty restaurant and left an empty restaurant. At lunchtime, mid-weekend. Yes, it was a gorgeous and sunny day outside, but there are still, nay, always people who are looking to be fed, regardless of the weather. For all intents and purposes, it appeared we might have been the first diners there that very day! I hear you arguing that hot weather = a light lunch, and to be fair you’d have a point. The killer blow is that we passed Jo’Burger – a gourmet burger restaurant that serves up obscenely large beefy sandwiches – twice in going up and down the Lower Rathmines Road, and both times it was teeming with at least nine or ten diners. Given their location, newcomer status and the style of food they serve, I imagined that Extreme Pizza would be a serious point of interest for epicurean Dubliners and casual foodies alike. Their Facebook fan page would suggest so, what with over seven hundred fans (nearly twice as many as Yamamori!). Zero activity in and around a Saturday lunchtime is, in reality, something any restaurant of their kind should be concerned about. Rebecca and myself, on the other hand, were only concerned about having some good pizza.

The walls of Extreme Pizza do their best to live up to the name; action shots of mid-air snowboarders and stunt bikes on the walls are punctuated by the odd surfboard or skateboard with American flag decals. Think a toned down yet sportier version of TGI Friday’s. Quiet as it was, and with songs like Brown Eyed Girl piping in overhead, the only extreme I felt was a mildly relaxing one. Then again, it makes me wonder how they could fit a genuine ‘extreme’ into the meals they dish out. Throw the pizza like a frisbee at your table maybe? Or they could have you kill the cows and chickens that eventually supplement the meat. I know! Just serve the food on fire and make you hunt for an extinguisher, that’s definitely extreme. And, if I’m going to be honest, it might even end up tasting a little better.

Which brings us onto the pizza itself. Extreme Pizza is advertised as a gourmet pizza restaurant and the menu certainly looks to deliver with exotic toppings that include marinated artichoke hearts, new potatoes, gorgonzola, shredded pork and even mandarins! You can create your own, and a choice of calzones are also on offer. Sides include the usual suspects of chicken wings and salads, with the addition of the interestingly named ‘extremely twisted sticks’. I opted for the eight-inch ‘kickin’ chicken’ which included scallions, fontina, mozzarella, coriander and chicken marinated in a spicy ginger peanut sauce. Rebecca chose a ‘yard sale’, topped with sausage, pepperoni, salami, mushrooms, black olives, green pepper and onions, tomatoes, mozzarella and a kitchen sink. Phew! We shared two of the extremely twisted sticks and dips to match: blue cheese and garlic.

Everything looked the part as it arrived, and we both had high hopes after the past week’s pizza shenanigans. By the time we’d each finished a slice, it was difficult to go any further. The problem was a simple matter of taste, or lack thereof in this case. You’d bite into the pizza, chew for about three, maybe four seconds and suddenly, all you taste is bread. For me, bread and spice. With all of the ingredients listed above, you’d expect either pizza to be a symphony of flavours, even if a bit scattergun. In either event, there was literally nothing, which only served to make the entire thing a chore to get through for both of us. I disassembled a slice of Rebecca’s ‘yard sale’ to see exactly how much of each topping there was and this is the amount I gathered:

That should collectively taste of at least something, right? Eating the ingredients separately revealed three things: 1) each component was flavourless; these were simply just bad ingredients, 2) said ingredients can be found in many of the set pizzas, so it can’t just have been a bad pick on our part, 3) the tomato sauce underneath was virtually nonexistent, and the base itself stodgy. The extremely twisted sticks meanwhile turned out to be cheesy garlic bread twisted into a roll, though we ended up barely touching them just to avoid going into a bread induced coma.

In total we paid only twenty-two euro (which also covered two cokes), so at least one positive to take was that it really didn’t end up costing us an arm and a leg. Such pricing did, however, raise more serious questions about whether or not it would have been worth our while to simply walk down the road and get ourselves a meal deal in Dominos instead. An extra fifteen minutes added onto that would then have led us straight back into Hell, which offers gourmet pizza cooked with a lot more care and flavours that don’t go MIA. More importantly, Hell is no pricier than Extreme Pizza, making it a no-brainer of a choice at the end of the day. This, topped off with an absolutely nonexistent Saturday lunch service, spells out potentially bad news for Dublin’s latest pizza franchise. The extreme food may just be a gimmick, but there’s nothing catchy about extreme disappointment.

Extreme Pizza
1, Upper Rathmines Road,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6

Tph: 01-4062626

http://www.extremepizza.com/