Pizza Hut, Piccadilly Circus

Type: Wannabe Italian

Where: Pretty much everywhere, but my favourite is opposite Piccadilly Circus.

Nearest Tube: Read above.

Price: It’s not that cheap so if you’ve got one BRING A FRIEND.

Rating:£££

Lets get one thing straight, each one of us enjoys a lunchtime Pizza Hut buffet as much as the next. However, unless you’re under the age of twelve, or have some painting of you looking majorly decrepit stored away in your attic, this can cost you up to £6.99 excluding drink! We all know you can get the all you can eat salad bar for £4.99, but unless you’re having a rexi day no one should choose this option (though kudos must go to PH who have recently revamped their salad bar).

Get a friend. If you don’t have one get a family member. Londonfood4afiver do not endorse meeting friends on the internet. Get the tube to Piccadilly Circus, cross over the road and get a comfy little booth in everyone’s favourite pseudo-Italian chain. Order tap water. If you’re nifty – like me – you’ll have a little vial of squash around your neck to jazz it up a bit. 

Order a large Margerita between two (£9.49). If you’ve got a spare 49p you guyses can upgrade to either a large Hawaiian or Farmhouse – thats ham and mushroom to those not au fait with the PH lingo – (£10.49). If you haven’t managed to nab yourself a friend yet take half home and have it for breakfast.

Everyone knows that PH pizzas are greasy and cheesy and scrumptious. What makes Piccadilly Circus PH stand out is it’s staff (look out for dreamboat Coby) – so far me and Katy have been given a free cookie dough desert and a free salad bar. Print off masks of our faces and you too may be as lucky.

Gourmet this ain’t – but that’s not going to stop me going back time and time again.

Aone Review, opposite Angel underground

Type: Indianish/Vegetarian

Where: Opposite Angel underground. Durr.

Nearest Tube: Angel

Price: £4.95 for all you can eat.

Rating: £, and if I knew how to subtract that by half of a £ I certainly would.

Lets get one thing straight, Katy and I have walked past vegetarian buffet Aone everyday for the last nine months, and have got repulsion quivers each time. Mounds of unappetizing tofu and noodles, anaemic crayfish and wilting salad leaves in platters sit by the window in an attempt to lure in custom. The place is unarguably cheap – a mere £3.95 if you want to take your buffet back to the office with you –  but naturally this means the food quality suffers.

One day Katy and I didn’t feel like a Pret soup, a M&S falafel wrap, or a slice of pizza from the overpriced City canteen and we knew what we had to do. OH how we suffer for this god awful site. As we trekked up to Aone, the only thing surpassing the feeling of hunger was the feeling of dread for the food that awaited us.

We went in, ordered the buffet and a tap water (or as we call it ‘old faithful’) got our plates and piled them sky high. The amount on our plates was not due to the scrumptious look of the food, but to increase our chances of likely at least one thing.

This was a successful ploy as the teeny-weeny vegetarian spring rolls were passable. Unfortunately a couple of mine became contaminated by the earthy juice from a Quorn dish, so they had to be left. They also had some deceptively looking crispy potatoes which I stocked up on, as the rest was nothing short of atrocious.

Ludicrously watery sauces, oil laden rices and noodle and questionable meat substitutes are giving me repulsion quivers – purely from recollection. Things were either remarkably unflavoursome, or had this bizarre unfamilar after taste, that I imagine is similar to that of chewing on grass and soil. Perhaps Aone should market their buffet towards animals that chew the cud.

A couple of spring rolls and an unnecessary service charge later we left, stocking up on stack-a-jacks and milky way magic rolls on the way back to uni.

Avoid.