16″ vegan hickory BBQ pizza reality madness
Looking back on my colourful childhood, I can vividly recall one of my favourite recurring memories.
My family didn’t have a lot of very much at all, so our recreation time was filled with cheap and cheerful activities that posed minimal threat to our meagre budget. We lived near the beach, so we went to the beach. Drive-ins were still big news Down Under, so my mother used to sneak me past the payment booth in the trunk to save money. And inexpensive store-bought pizzas were eaten in front of VHS screenings of low-budget horror films that were highly-inappropriate for people of my age.
So many of my formative hours were spent in front of titles such as The Burning, I Spit On Your Grave and Blood Beach while stuffing my face with greasy pizza. Such fond memories.
Flash forward a few decades and I am in London with no drive-in and no beach. I still adore gore flicks but the store-bought pizza has been a bit more troublesome to recreate for vegan me. Sure, Karma Free look after the herbivores but they are a long way from my house. Thankfully, I have discovered a pizza joint just 12 minutes away by car that serves a range of piping hot vegan pizzas! You know the rest…
Strap yourself in for a tale of epic eating proportions. I purchased two 16 inch vegan pizzas from Village Pizza and settled in for a night in West London in front of a bad horror movie.
Village Pizza of Twickenham
I loved Village Pizza on entering. It was old school in the best way with cosy booths in the window. It made me want to grab a slice, grab a soda and slide on up to my pals as we watched the world go by. But that’s just romanticised nostalgia talking, so let’s get to the good stuff.
My first monster of a pizza was the thin crust 16″ Hickory Chicken. This gorgeous specimen of food featured vegan chicken covered in BBQ Sauce with mushrooms, sweetcorn and mixed peppers. It was a true champion of vegan pizzas.
16″ Hickory Chicken pizza
Hickory close up
Josh and I could barely contain our excitement over this piece of perfection. The vegan cheese used was Cheezly and it was cooked just right.
Next up, we went with the 16″ Spaniard. We delighted at garlic style sausage, black olives, fresh tomatoes and red onions covering the massive vegan base. It was stunning. I adore a pizza that isn’t topped too heavy or too light and this was spot on.
16″ Spaniard pizza
Close up of pizza perfection
If the above pizza perfection isn’t enough to get you to Village Pizza now, this fact surely will clinch the deal. If you pick up instead of asking for delivery, you only pay for one pizza when ordering two. Best value is loved by me.
Mega value
Village Pizza advertise their vegan options on their menu
Oh… I almost forgot. We went old school and ate our store-bought pizza with a horror film. Sadly, it was no match for the halcyon days of the slasher films of my youth. For the sake of brevity, do yourself a favour and don’t bother watching Dominion – Prequel To The Exorcist. But do eat at Village Pizza.
Visit Village Pizza online to order for collection or home delivery
I’m so pleased to read this post – I was excited to see the vegan cheeses available at Village Pizza but the bases used to contain dairy – SOO annoying. How cool that they’re now totally vegan – I can’t wait to get a take away again!!
They are very tasty. They appear to have gone to a lot of trouble to get their vegan items correct. They use Fry’s even! I will be back for sure.
Wow! Thank you very much for writing such a nice blog and yes we do care a lot when it comes to our vegan products. I am writing this message on behalf of village pizza management as we are their appointed digital agency. Would you please correct the link for accessing their website. As currently the link “on line” is directing to some other website, althouhg village pizza can still be ordered from that site but as village pizza does have it’s own website where all vegans can place orders and enjoy the vegan taste. The correct link for accessing village pizza website is as under:
http://www.villagepizzauk.com
Regards
Malik tahir
DigiCom360
Hi Malik. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the correct link. Village Pizza is my new favourite food place in London so I want to be sure to get it right!
And I just discovered Village Pizza have a few locations! Who has been to one?!?!
Hmmm, wonder if they deliver…to the West Midlands?
Hello,
I have added this place to my list. Thank you for sharing.
Oh, that looks great! I wish there were one near me. (Although I shouldn’t really complain, when I get hungry I can just walk to Soho!) My current favourite vegan pizza in London is Otto in Notting Hill, I love their cashew cheese!
LOVE it there too!!!! Although the caramelised garlic was a but much for me. The lentil kofte is something I probably eat at least once a week.
Oh AWESOME. I am going to eat so much of this when I move to London soon.
By the way, if you’re ever stopping by Manchester again, you can get very good vegan pizzas from a restaurant called Dough in the Northern Quarter. They’re definitely not AS vegan friendly as this place by the looks of things (pizzas are vegan, but no fake chicken or similar), but they’re still darn tasty.
Wow, those pizzas look totally perfect! I’m a bit sad that the closest Village Pizza is 46.3 miles away, so close but yet so far!
I’m so excited about this!!! I found your blog after a lovely girl at wholefoods kensington recomended it. Go you!
Glad you found me!
[…] a huge selection of 16″ vegan masterpieces created by the talented purveyors of takeaway, Village Pizza. You will be treated to such tantalising flavours as Hickory Chicken, Spaniard and Tikka Surprise. […]
We were delighted to find a branch of Village Pizza near us after reading about it on here, and we ordered via the website last week – the hickory “chicken” tasted great!
Second time was tonight, when we ordered over the phone, and I strongly suspect that the pizza base and the cheese was the regular dairy kind. What does one do in this situation? The delivery guy had gone, we were famished and tired, the cheese can’t be re-used. I hate it when this happens.
I said “vegan” about five times on the phone, but it seems you have to specifically ask for the vegan base and vegan cheese when ordering the vegan pizzas. (It’s not a problem on the website, you have to tick the boxes yourself.)
What I usually do in cases like this is never buy from there again – not out of spite or anything, just because it seems less hassle to just not bother.
(Perhaps we’re wrong, by the way, and are unjustly damning Village Pizza for making great vegan pizzas which are indistinguishable from their animal-based counterparts. But I think us vegans have a sixth sense for accidental dairy, and it definitely looked different to the pizza we had last week. We know this as we were so impressed that we took photos of it!)
Which outlet did you buy from? I have eaten from the Old Kent Road outlet in the last few days and that was vegan and lovely! I have never been served anything but vegan at the Twickenham branch and I eat there a lot.
Maybe you could have phone back to ask them. I hope you didn’t get served cheese!
Dear JC,
We serve a lot of Vegan Pizzas and respect the trust that we have from our customers for the Vegan Recipes and Systems that we have worked tirelessly to introduce. If you had telephoned the Branch or me at Head Office (my number is advertised everywhere-07792344114) we definitely would have been able to assist. I always advise all customers Non-Vegan and Vegan to ask the telephonist to repeat the order to ensure that your pizza is made exactly the way you like it. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you want to discuss this further.
Hi Katy,
Thanks for your reply. I was going to call the shop (Old Kent Road, by the way) but it was 1.30am, we had friends over, and we had to be up at 8am. I was also going to Leeds for a few days the next day, so as you can imagine, staying up even longer didn’t appeal. Also, what would happen to that pizza? The cheese has been used, you can’t put it back. So we ate it.
I really appreciate that you offer the vegan pizzas – really, it means a lot – and I think it’s great that you keep an eye on blogs like this to stay on top of things. The vegan pizza we ordered online was delicious.
I will say that when ordering on the website it’s pretty easy to keep it all-vegan (just search for ‘vegan’ on every page, tick the right boxes) but the paper menu isn’t very clear about what you have to say to get an all-vegan pizza. Do the four vegan-topping pizzas come with normal base and cheese unless you ask specifically, or are they already all-vegan?
Tell you what, I’ll try again. I’ll go in and buy one – making sure it’s all-vegan – and I’ll post my results here!
Dear JC,
Due to the differences in the computer systems for order taking each branch has its own regulations
as to when the question is asked, if that makes sense to you, but you are completely right with regards to ordering on line, it is so accurate and always a good way to go if your order is has particular requirements. New clearer menus have been written, a new computer system is in the process of being developed so we are moving with the times – hopefully! Always ask staff to repeat your order and don’t worry about repeating as many times as neccessary – it is your pizza, that we create for especially for you and we want it to be perfect! Remember failsafe idea! Give me a ring and I will process the order for you and maybe you can give me your ideas about what other types of Vegan products you would be interested in tasting!
Best Wishes
Katy
Hi Katy,
Thanks for your offer of assistance. I’ve ordered online twice more from the Old Kent Road branch and both times the pizza has been exactly as ordered and superb – and very fast delivery, too!
It was definitely cow cheese on the pizza that one time though, and I definitely said “vegan pizza” several times to the guy. But it was just a mistake – had I had more time and energy I would have chased it up that night. But water under the bridge and all that, I’m not holding it against anyone. I’m glad to hear that the menus will become clearer, and about the new computer system, which should make errors a thing of the past!
I really appreciate that you sell vegan pizzas, by the way. It’s great that there’s somewhere that does this!
Cheers,
JC
Thanks JC for your patience and faith in us. It is hard for the staff, when 99.9% of people that order pizza want cow cheese and the Vegan Pizzas are also sold 95% of the time to Vegetarians who want cow cheese! Have a nice day and keep in touch!
Thanks
Katy
Discovered your blog at lunch today. Hilarious! Currently transitioning back into veggie-dom and you may tempt me to the dark side with all this vegan food, it’s making me so hungry!
Will try and make the drinks some time soon, can’t believe there’s so many vegans in London!
Lx
Good to have you back on side!
[…] the event and helping us serve delicious pizza. Adoration to the skilled pizza craftspeople of Village Pizza and gratitude to Barrow Boys Crisps for gifting the event with some tasty, vegan-certified samples. […]
OMG I live in Teddington, just around the corner! I will pay a visit very soon. Thanks for sharing this!
Thank you so much for sharing this! I intend to visit this place this weekend! The pictures look amazing. Hurrah for Village Pizzas and their open mindedness!
On the back of this review, and (1) because we were both exhausted and (2) from time to time I miss being able to get a delivered pizza, and (3) I think it’s important to support vegan food ventures (both by vegan and non-vegan establishments) whenever possible, we made the extravagant (going out for food or buying take-away is a treat and a luxury which we can rarely afford to do these days) decision to make an order.
We ordered the biggest size Spaniard pizza online from the Old Kent Road branch. Thought the biggest size would do for the two of us (I can’t eat much these days and my other half has never been a big eater) for the night, perhaps with leftovers for a lunchtime snack the next day. HUGE disappointment. For just under £20, the best I can say about it was that it was large (surface area-wise only- we will come to that shortly) and edible.
There was the merest hint-of-a-scraping of tomato sauce base, little pretend cheese, and the toppings were not nearly as generous as those FGV received on his. We had a decent amount of garlic style sausage but that is as far as it went. Neither could I say it was hot, just lukewarm (although how can you expect a thin piece of bread with not much else on *to* be much more than warm, given that it had been sent out into the big wide world without the thermal vest of tomato sauce and cosy jumper of cheezly). Yes, it was big, but lacked any substance.
I don’t wish to do down Village Pizzas vegan efforts (I REALLY wanted to sing their praises for making the move into vegan options), but this was a totally underwhelming (and expensive for what it was, or rather, was not) experience. We both went to bed hungry, unsatisfied, and nearly £20 poorer. In fairness, I suspect it has a lot to do with the branch but it’s difficult for me to justify that sort of money on what was a glorified (and not that glorified at that!) flatbread.
Sorry to hear of your experience. I have found the Twickenham branch to be much better quality than the Old Kent Road location. You should really let them know you were disappointed.
Oh my goodness, I am so sorry to hear that, I will definitely investigate further. I would be really grateful if you could jump onto my website http://www.villagepizzauk.com so we can speak directly.
Many Thanks,
Katy
Village Pizza
I’ve just been to their branch in Ewell, thank you for sharing, after reading your blog I found out of the buy 1 pizza get other free for collection, as the Ewell branch is too far to deliver to me (3.75 miles away) I would have to collect anyways and had a nice bargain thanks for your info! What a great experience I’ve had there too, the staff are stars and so knowledgeable about their vegan products!!! A+++++++
after reading all this and remembering how bad the English was on the phone, my better half is there demanding to see the packet of vegan cheese with his own eyes before he orders… thanks!
Good to hear you’re standing up for what’s right. It’s important to be sanctimonious about fucking pizza after all.