THE PLACE
It’s seems so long ago that Riki Tik was a trendy London bar, its logo designed by Bjork’s go-to art crew, Me Company. Now it’s so part of the Brighton landscape (it decamped from the smoke about a decade ago) we don’t know if it’s still hip or not. With some great DJs in the evening it certainly draws a large, mixed crowd but despite a solid history with Thai food it’s never been on the food map. A switch to handmade pizzas has created a ripple of buzz around town though.
THE MEAL
Pizza – it’s just glorified cheese on toast really, isn’t it? You’d think that it’d be easy to do but oh no, so many places fuck it right up. Riki Tik start well by hand-making the dough, rolling it into an Italian-style thin crust. The menu is made up of a list of individually priced toppings, so you can build your ultimate pizza. A margarita kicks things off at £4.50 with vegetable, cheese, fish and meat topping weighing in at 50p, 70p, £1 and £1 respectively. It’s easy to go wild and end up with a pricey pizza, and with SOURCE credit card in hand we load up. Chillies, sunblushed tomatoes and chorizo (and much more) is loaded on the first, the latter coming in massive, satisfying chunks. Olives, extra parmesan and salami are just a few of the ingredients on the second. Neither are stodgy, tasting fresh and homemade coming with plenty of cheese. Extra flavours came in a full range of intense oils.
THE VERDICT
Two verdicts on this one. The chorizo-based pizza is declared “the best pizza I can remember having in a long time.” Meanwhile the salami-topped version draws the exclamation: “it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had.” It should be pointed out here that we don’t drink while we review.
WERE WE SUSSED
One half of the SOURCE reviewing team used to DJ at Riki Tik but we managed to find a time when no one she knew was there, so we think we got away with it. We’d expect them to always be this good.
Riki Tik
Bond St
01273 683844
until 9pm everyday
