Giuseppe’s Malone Road

Malone road, for all the length of it, is like a void for good food options.

Seriously. Take a drive from top to bottom, or hop on an 8 bus to see the view, and you’ll be like “for all these nice houses, are there any good takeaways within reach?”. That’s why we were curious to try to Giuseppe’s on Malone Road.

Previous Impressions

We believe they’re from Omagh, and our pizza impressions west of the Bann are hard to come by.

Seeing Giuseppe’s open up in what was always a tough spot on Malone Road (off the top of our heads, it was previously a chippy, noodle place, hotpot station, maybe a burger joint and who knows?), and essentially not too far from where Reggies has become Queen’s Pizzeria, means it needs to do the job in a tough spot.

But, if Wing It is doing well from its big green concrete block, and The Post House has opened up looking all fancy, is has to be on the up and up surely?

What’s on the menu?

You can view their full menu directly on Google here, but it is a case of having high hopes because:

• They only do a handful of pizzas
• Doughballs are only side (i.e. no need for chips or wings)
• It’s a few cans of drink and nothing more

What are we trying to say? Because it’s minimal and doesn’t fuck around, we are hopeful that the pizzas are going to hit the mark. The only dark spot would be seeing milkshakes, which are the only red flag you’ll ever get from a pizza place (we’re looking at you Fallones, Roccos and such ilk)

What we ordered from Giuseppe’s Belfast

We wanted what could be referred to as a pizza reset, i.e. keep things plain and simple, so we ordered:

• 12″ Margherita
• Lava Bread

No “crazy” toppings. No heaps of curly fries. Just two different sized pies so as not to fuck around.

What was the damage?

The pizza was £11.20; the lava bread £9.60, for a £20.80 sub-total. Because we ordered directly from their site/app, a wee discount go applied to knock it down to £18.18 – for collection.

(At the time of writing, any order on their website here over £20 will get a 15% discount)

^You can’t tell, but it was absolutely pissing it down when we took this photo – such is the dedication

First Slice Impressions

Ladies & gentlemen, this is mambo no.5 what we can only describe as the most bar-pizza looking pizza we’ve seen in a long time:

We absolutely love a good bar pie if they’re done right. You’re looking for a simple as simple can get sauce & cheese, with a crust that is bordering on cracker crispiness on the bottom.

We will not lie. Lifting a slice up pre-bite, it isn’t the sexiest looking, but it does border on looking like a Ninja Turtles style slice where this bite will see the cheese stretch for miles (notice the hand cramping to get it to stay still without flopping).

We did leave a wee note to ask for the under-carriage to be well done (again, plain Margherita so you always want to see how they’re utilising that big bold oven)

It does taste exactly like it looks: absolute textbook plain cheese pizza to a tee. It felt no-fuss and did exactly what you needed it to.

There was a little division between the two of us at Slice HQ while we debated the pizza.

Comments included:

“this is done quite well”

“the amount of cheese is like one of those Goodfella’s bazillion cheese pizzas”

“i wouldn’t even both with a dip for this crust, can just munch on it”

Moving away from the pizza

Let’s spice things up a little with Giuseppe’s Lava bread:

Obviously this is the Giuseppe’s take on dragon’s tongue/chilli bread/ whatever silly names the next pizzeria coming along wants to call it. Don’t know if it was because it was the smaller 9″ size, but you can see the crust is much darker than the Margherita. Cranking open the bonnet to look under, it seems that isn’t replicated on the base:

You can see the lightness there dead centre; an indicator that the toppings are heavy on the pie, i.e. moisture is having a hard time getting out. For being called LAVVVVVVVVA bread, it did actually have a nice kick to it.

It made for a good back-and-forth from the “main” pizza to this little side quest though. And if you’re keen to always have a perfectly crisp crunch from the underside of your pizza, always look to Pi Guy in Trademarket.

So, is GIUSEPPE’s the new best pizza in Belfast?

Belfast? No. Malone Road? yeah! Just take a moment to look at that pie again:

If you were to ask someone to pull out their phone & google image search plain pizza, there’s a good chance this pie would show up in those first few results.

While it isn’t breaking boundaries or heading straight to the top, we want to assume that the other small selections on the menu match the level to which this is cooked. The Lava bread made us think that if we’d have gone for the House Special or such, the pie might have been a floppy old mess indeed.

Judging solely from this, it does seem like a reliable kind of pizza you’d want to order when you have a group of people around, or let’s say a kid’s birthday party, and you quickly need to order a half dozen cheese pizzas.

And we’re guessing that because they’re on one of the arterial routes for students around Queens, there’s going to be a fair few amount of pizza boxes popping up in Elms and such.

Our score

We’ll happily give GIUSEPPE’s Malone Road a generous 3.25 of out 5 barks, but we will be coming back again soon and updating this review when we try one of the speciality pizzas.

(And for those who expect to see one by now, sorry, we forgot to get a photo of Sam eating a crust, so here’s a random old pic of him):

If you take one thing away from the menu, it seems like Giuseppe’s can corner the bt9 market as a reliable pizza spot when you have to keep a group of people happy.

GIUSEPPE’S FAQ