Contributed by Annabelle King
I’d heard about Brickoven Milano in Chiswick from a few people — a magical place where you could dine in peace while your little darlings played in a separate designated children’s playroom under the supervision of a nanny and sometimes where a children’s entertainer make an appearance.
Restaurant with a playroom? Nice. Restaurant that likes kids? Fabulous.
The best bit though is that the playroom has cameras which stream a live feed through to your own personal iPad which is brought to your table on arrival without even asking for it. There they are – live and in technicolour, playing happily away in the bright sunny colourful playroom while you tuck into a pizza or even a cheeky glass of lunchtime vino.
Set on the old Frankie’s site on Chiswick High Road, Brickoven Milano is slightly off the beaten track and a good five minute walk from Turnham Green Terrace. Not as convenient as say Pizza Express or Franco Manca, but still well worth the trip. It’s a great space, large, cool and now done in minimalist Skandi decor. The staff are all Italian and very attentive. Their speciality is oval pizza made ‘very thin and fragrant, as a consequence of a special dough mixture made without yeast’. So says Marco Montorfano, the Milanese owner and founder of this first British outpost of Milan’s most popular restaurant chain. Indeed they are big into health and organic here featuring low gluten content grains such as kamut, spelt and quinoa.
So, what does a healthy pizza taste like? I have to say that my pizza did indeed taste much lighter than normal and was huge and delicious. But the highlight was the kids’ pizza which was shaped like a fish, complete with olive for the eye. It was enchanting and the girls loved it, gobbling up the whole thing before rushing off to take turns watching each other on the ‘telly’.
The iPad idea is clever but a little distracting. My mother and I ended up glued to it, compelled to watch what they were doing and going into panic when we couldn’t see them. Eventually I turned the thing around so that I could get on with eating my pizza. I’m of the ‘if they need me, they’ll find me’ school of parenting and frankly the food is too good to miss.
The UK restaurant doesn’t have a website yet. For more info check them out on Twitter or give them a call on 020 8994 5834.
Brickoven Milano is at 66 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 1SY
