Sanmarino Pizza

I’d heard about San Marino from my friend who lives nearby, as her Saturday night pizza place. Having myself recently moved to the area I’d popped to the local supermarket and wanted a quick dinner, so thought I’d visit.
Inside it’s a bit of an odd place… it’s vaster than most take out pizza places and there looks like there’s a lot of empty space. The customer side has a few tables and chairs, but it’s not the most exciting place to sit and enjoy your dinner.
Anyway, the pizza. It’s on the cheap end of the take-​out pizza spectrum, but I was surprised to find that unlike a lot of these which do the more pan style pizza bases, San Marino’s is a thin/​Italian style pizza (which you’d think might be obvious from the name, but I never assume with pizza places anymore). My pizza was also less greasy that some I’d had and was still warm despite the 10min walk in the drizzle.
It might not be gourmet food, but it’s nice to see (and eat) a more authentic pizza at a good price.

When it comes to establishments like San Marino Pizza, the whole experience of my visit has to be up there with the best, for me to go out of my way and return, this particular trip was not.
The service was okay. The food, okay and overall, everything was okay.
The staff at San Marino were talkative, sociable and friendly, amongst each other that is. It just made me feel uncomfortable and slightly clueless as to what I should do.
The food was quick, perhaps too quick and it came out greasy/​soggy, two adjectives I do not like to associate with pizza.
Needless to say, I haven’t been back since and don’t intend to any time soon.

When going to a take-​away pizza store there are two things that determine my impression of the place. First, critically, is the pizza, which San Marino do very well, their margherita is a good, no-​nonsense, tasty pizza and I enjoyed the salt and grease treat very much.
Second, is the price, and San Marino’s is a little steep for what you get. I can make a whole family meal of pizzas at home for 8 or 9 quid (the cost of the 12 inch pizza that I had). But I suppose you should expect to pay more for take-​out pizzas. I must confess it left me a little disappointed and still hungry after spending almost 10 pounds on a single pizza.
Good quality pizza, although the quality and quantity doesn’t quite trump the cost. You can get better and larger amounts of pizza for less money. Or you could have supreme pizzas for a few hundred pennies if you were willing to learn to cook — or pop over to your mom’s with the ingredients.

San Marino Pizza is a fast food shop in the centre of Strichley selling pizzas and kebabs. It has a fairly large frontage for what is predominantly a take away buisness, making the place often look empty as much of their buisness seems to come from deliveries. They serve a fairly traditional range of pizzas in different sizes with the usual range of topping such as ham or vegetables — me, I usually go for spicy vegetarian in a situation like this. I’ve been to San Marino Pizza a few times and will probably go again, it’s just that the experience is so unremarkable in almost every sense. The service is good enough, the prices are neither cheap nor expensive and the food tastes the same as it would in a thousand other generic fast food shops. The kind of place people choose out of convenience rather than for love of it’s products. Will anything change it? Probably not.