Lunch at Little Wing Pizza, Belfast

Having had a lovely breakfast at the divine Brown Hound Bakery in Drogheda, we had reached our Belfast destination and wanted lunch. Little Wing Pizza came highly recommended by Manuel The Waiter from the now defunct Well Done Fillet website.  They've four branches - Bangor, Lisburn Road, Upper Newtownards Road and the city centre branch in Ann Street (a mere hop, skip and jump from Victoria Square) where we went for something Eeetalian to eat.

First things first, Little Wing is busy.  There were always people waiting for tables and they do a cracking trade in takeout pizza too.  Their pizza boxes are gorgeous - a beautiful pale blue with the car printed on the front.  they even have pizza slice boxes.  Clever...  They also really seem to cater for families, based on the table beside us - three young boys and their dad.  The boys were having a whale of a time with pizza, icecream and hot chocolate afterwards.  I'm sure they bounced all the way home on a sugar rush!

Anyway, back to us...  we didn't want to eat loads because we had booked dinner at The Bar+Grill and I wanted to appreciate every last mouthful.  We decided to share an order of Garlic Dough Balls (£1.50) and the special Quattro Stagioni pizza (£8.50) with a Coke for himself and a San Pellegrino Limone for me (£2.25 each).

Garlic Doughballs - before and after

The doughballs came out in a little ceramic dish with two toothpicks to keep our fingers pristine.  Luckily there were eight so we didn't have to negotiate who got the last one - it would have been me, for the record.  I'm a dab hand at distracting The Hubs in such situations.

Our Quattro Stagioni pizza came with spicy meatballs, pepperoni, roasted garlic portabello mushrooms & artichokes on another large ceramic plate, with a pizza wheel tucked underneath so you could divide it up as you saw fit.

It had a lovely thin crust and a great edge for holding onto the slice but I was surprised that the promised spicy meatballs were more like regular Italian sausage with no hint of heat, but the pepperoni was hot, hot, hot.  It was a gorgeous pizza - almost as good as the one from La Cucina in Limerick

One thing I really liked about Little Wing was their branding.  I'm a bit of a stickler for doing something simply and well, and sticking to it, and they were consistent throughout, with branded pizza boxes acting as artwork on the shelves behind us, funny comment cards and great kids activity sheets.  Somebody has a good eye for detail.

The bill

The only downfall was the service.  I know they were busy but you had to practically stand and scream to grab somebody's attention.  Getting the bill and then paying it took 25 minutes... apparently their card machine was busy but nobody thought to let us know as we sat there for 15 minutes waiting, and waiting, and waiting to give them money for our great value lunch.  And people waiting for tables gave us evil looks to pay up and get out...   Easily remedied though.