Tasty pizzas and marvellous mussels at Zero Degrees

Zero Degrees

29/31 Montpelier Vale
Blackheath
London. SE3 0TJ
020 8852 5619
 http://www.zerodegrees.co.uk/index.php


After another lovely first part of the weekend in Lewisham we decided to head into Blackheath for a leisurely Sunday lunch. Our first stop was Zero Degrees a place we had wanted to visit a few weekends before but it had been too busy, as it is also a popular bar in the evenings. This time there were plently of tables and we were soon seated.

Zero Degrees is a microbrewery so you get interesting fruit beers to go with the Italian-flavoured food. It has a very modern black and chrome interior with high ceilings and shiny floors it feels very spacious and trendy. They do a lot of pizzas so that seemed the thing to try. 

I decided to go for the Caramelised Pear & Gorgonzola variety (Caramelised pears, gorgonzola cheese, taleggio cheese, walnuts & tomato sauce, topped with rocket & ranch dressing)
with added chicken. The Language Whizz went for the chinese takeaway pizza, well it was Peking Duck with all the trimmings. The Veggie had the Porcini Mushroom (Porcini mushrooms, red onions, smoked cheese, white wine & garlic sauce), whilst EMI Guy went for the fishy option selecting the Mussels Mariniere (a kilo of mussels served with fires and mayo) from a long list of Mussels dishes.


To wash the food down I choose the current fruit beer which was Mango beer, and EMI Guy went for a wheat ale. The others had soft drinks but the beers are definitely worth a try if you go.


Our pizzas arrived promptly, the service unremarkable but efficient. My pizza was as rich as I had expected so I was glad for the succulent chicken to break up the sweetness of the pears and the glut of cheese. The bases were nicely cooked but due to rather too much of some of the ingredients I couldn't eat it all. 


The Veggie enjoyed her pizza and managed to polish most of it off. Unfortunately, the Language Whizz had a similar problem to me; her hoision sauce drenched pizza was just too rich and overloaded with topping. This was a shame as with a slightly less generous hand the pizzas would have been much improved.


If I visit Zero Degrees again I will certainly try the Mussels as EMI Guy's dish looked so appeitising, although he couldn't manage that many of the fries - the star of the show was definitely the large, plump morsels of seafood. And with so many different styles to choose from, ranging from Creole to Thai Green Curry there was something for every lover of the little suckers.


I was a bit disappointed with my Mango beer as the fruit flavour was very muted. I much prefered the second I chose, the Black lager, which was a little like Guinness but had a nice coffee bean aftertaste.


We all managed to eat desserts, although they were far from memorable. My passion fruit and mango ice cream cake was rather too hard with a stale tasting base and could have been so much nicer. The Veggie's usual choice of Sorbet was probably the most sensible, although the mud cake that our two friends shared went down rather better than my feeble excuse for a pudding.


All in all, I would like to return to Zero Degrees to sample the Mussels and maybe visit in the evening to down a few more of those Black lagers!


Scores on the Doors: 7 out of 10