All about the dough

Even before I had pizza for starter, pizza for main course and pizza for pudding, I felt dyspeptic. Fire & Stone's menu is riddled with the kind of repellent menu-ese that's guaranteed to make my gorge rise: 'Fire & Stone salads have been conceived with the same attention to health, vitality and quality as our pizzas'; 'Our amazing combinations have been passionately designed to ensure that each pizza is delivered to perfection'.

Passionately designed. Love it. And if you buy that, you'll buy the rest of the hokum on offer at this most cynical of operations.

Like The Epicurean Lounge, the idea is evolved pizza. But whereas The Epicurean is clearly a labour of love, this is more like the bastard son of spreadsheet.

Pizzas are an easy way of making money, restaurant-wise: the ratio of (cheap) dough to (expensive) topping is firmly on the side of the restaurateur. And the punter, stuffed with carbohydrate, reels out thinking he's got his money's worth. So tart up the basics with some faux exotic monikers - Saigon, Honolulu, Melbourne - and some outré ingredients - mango chutney, sweet chilli sauce, roasted peanuts - and voila: till-ringing concept.

Not a new idea, of course. Ever since some clever clogs first stuck a pineapple chunk on a pizza base, it has been open season. But this is the first time I've encountered it done with quite such fiendish dedication.

Plonked in the heart of touristfleecing Covent Garden, it's a twolevel space linked by an enormous wood-fired oven that looks like a cross between a Styrofoam cup and the devil's beehive and which belches out a mendaciously delicious fug of fragrant wood smoke. With its proliferation of curious surface textures, the place initially makes an impression but sit in it long enough and it just looks shoe-stringy.

Nobody told us food comes at the whim of the kitchen, that most irritating of contemporary catering conceits. So our starter - a plate of charcuterie (read olives, smoked ham, some flaccid Parma ham, a couple of slices of salami and a tub in which taramasalata and hummus formed an uneasy alliance) - came at the same time as our pizzas. And, since the charcuterie came with 'stone-baked pizza crusts' aka naked pizza bases, we suffered from rather an embarrassment of dough.

So, how was the 'absolutely amazing stone-baked pizza'? Well, a bit weird, really. Bases were oily and crispy, like biscuitty focaccia. Toppings were just nonsensical. My Lombok came with prawns, hoisin sauce, roasted red peppers, spring onions and chilli oil. With, of course, that essential Asian ingredient, mozzarella. Not bad. Not pizza, but not bad.

The date's Tennessee ('Our best seller,' our lovely waiter proudly announced) boasted BBQ sauce, smoked duck breast, roast pear and the artery-hardening trio of mozzarella, blue cheese and smoked applewood cheddar. This was cloyingly sweet, a big overbearing toastie with attitude.

Did we have the lemon meringue pizza for pudding? What do you think we are? Of course we did.

It was, predictably, gruesome: the pizza base smeared with what appeared to be lemon curd and sweetened shaving foam.