Big Boy Pizza, and a glimpse into my private life

Sunday morning, and you wake up to a a load of missed calls and look at your phone a see piles of dubious text sent the night before, and you exclaim "OMG! I don't remember writing that!"? Not me. I have picked up habit of finding photos of takeaway establishments that I don't for the life of me remember taking.

For example:
Lord knows where this one is. The horrible flash glare suggests it was taken from the top deck of a night bus. I think you can make out my reflection in the window.

I do also have hazy memories of once shouting at a cab driver to pull over so I could get a snap of a chicken shop at about 3am.

Pizza Jim sounds horribly mundane

Jim (I'm assuming that's the owner's name) didn't really push the boat out when it came to striking out on his own and setting up a takeaway. If we had to judge a person by his business's sign, we'd guess that he's had a season ticket to Sheffield United for the last 20 years (Standing, until it all got converted to seating) and worked in a small burglar alarm business just off the ringroad outside Doncaster all of his life, and barely been promoted the entire time. He's also been on holiday to Tenerife once, but it was too hot and he didn't like the food. In a mid-life crisis, he decided to turn his fate around, snapped up this place and after a long brainstorm and flash of inspiration, chose Pizza Jim over other frontrunners like "Pizza Hutch" and "Pizza".

We're guessing.

Stone Willy's, Clapham

Take-aways in Clapham are off the chain.

Just check this place out. It's insane.First of all, you might as well call it Concrete Penis Pizza. My next concern would be the offer of 'Chicken and Jacs'. What the name of Adam West are Jacs? I googled 'chicken jacs' and all that came up was bleeding dog food!

The fact it also seems to be a joint venture between Stone Willy's and late-70's disco group Shalamar is also rather mystifying. It's hardly a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell now, is it? You can't really have a novelty pop-rap crossover hit about the 'Combination Stone Willy's and Shalamar'. But if by chance Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris do and make it the anthem of the summer, I want 15% of the royalties.Then, on the left, is this sign. A design classic I think you'll agree, even if there is an erroneous hyphen in 'TO-GO'. I also like the guy sticking his head out the door doing a John Cena impression. (And yes I did go back to this at night to take another photo).

And then it gets weird.This is the sign on the right hand side. WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY? He looks like an Iraqi Colonel Sanders. As played by the love child of Christopher Lee, Borat and Salvador Dali. And what has he been doing since 1972? Secretly infiltrating the world's government's with his concrete penis, I mean, Stone Willy?
It's so hypnotic. The more you stare at hi, the worse it gets.ALL HAIL IRAQI SANDERS! ALL HAIL IRAQI SANDERS! o/ (That's an emoticon for a salute, by the way)

Glastonbury is good for racist Chinese Takeaways and attention-seeking market traders; may also feature live music

I wasn't really expecting Glastonbury to be a hot-bed of disgusting chicken. In my experience, music festivals tend to just be populated by greasy-but-edible burger vans. And, since my culinary highlight of the festival was getting some free vegan risotto by feigning interest in some Hare-Krishnas, I was right. However, there were a few things to point out.

First: Yet another Pizza Hut copyist:Then there was this spectacularly racist Chinese place:"Ah-so! Yoo wan noodles? They weel good noodles! Me love you long time! Sucky sucky! Ten dolla!"

What really made me bother to upload this post though most was this very typical fried chicken joint:I know what you're thinking; it's not not most memorable of places. And true it's not. When I went to take the photo, I was thinking I probably wouldn't get round to uploading it. As I pulled my camera out I was standing next to to a stall selling t-shirts or something. Out of nowhere, the guy running the stall popped up and pleaded with me to be in the photo. Begged me. Slightly scared, I obliged.
That guy made my festival.

Dosa Hut: In no way affiliated with Pizza Hut

So, you know all this shizzle about Pizza Hut being rebranded to become Pasta Hut? Do people really want that healthy stuff? More importantly, do Pizza Hut's discerning clientele want that? If it succeeds, is it going to become Veggie Hut?

Which brings us to the purpose of the post. Fig. 1 - The Pizza Hut Logo:Fig 2 - Middlesex vegetarian restaurant Dosa Hut:
Ok it's not the first place to blatantly rip off Pizza Hut. But what I'm really loving is the people this banging joint is bringing in. Check this guy up close:
I'm loving the 90s stylings. Bright blue denim. Stupidly padded jacket. He looks like he could an extra in Short Circuit 2 (Or if you're a total geek like me, drawn by Rob Liefeld).

Pizza.com doesn't actually own pizza.com

See, here's how the internet works. You register a domain name, advertise it online and in the real world, and people visit it. If you call your shop a URL which you clearly don't own, it's not going to help anyone.


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Except of course, the website pizza.com, a rather strange American pizza fan site. I think.

Actually no, Munch Inn is the worst pun on a sign so far

Did Supreme Mag-Pies make you groan? If so, you might want to click away from this page now.
You see what they did there? Munch Inn, munching. They've made a place name sound like an onomatopoeic verb and - oh never mind. We think it's in Wolverhampton, but we're not sure.

Sent in by reader Caleb, who has once again failed to impress with the awful camera built in to his BlackBerry. Buy a new phone!

Hello Pizza

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Hello to you too! If only all signs were this welcoming.

Pizza Hot closed down, but not for the reason you'd think

Takeaways seems to exist in a murky legal area when it comes to intellectual property. Pret sandwiches that steal the Apple logo, fried chicken shacks named after politicians - don't even get us started on Frangos. Now we've found a place called Pizza Hot. Not Pizza Hut, Pizza Hot.

Runcorn based Pizza Hot has hit the headlines, in the Warrington area anyway, because it's just been shut down by the food standards Gestapo for "inadequate hand washing and toilet facilities, rubbish and waste fat stored in food preparation areas, dirty walls, floors and equipment and poor food handling practices." Not because of the copyright theft going on with the name or anything.

We're not sure where Runcorn is, but it must be somewhere rubbish, because it's not on Google Street View. This is the only image we could find. You can't see much, but they've clearly lifted a font from Microsoft Word.
We think it's Comic Sans. Italic.

Takeaways with names that could pass for Israeli nightclubs #2: Space Pizza

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What a name. It sounds like that pizza arcade in Toy Story, but that door isn't very futuristic.

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Deals that are out of this world! Ho ho.

Kebab in a pizza. Enough said.

This Google Alert for kebabs is really paying dividends. Look at this:
It's not just a happy man in a silly hat with a pizza. It's a happy man in a silly hat with a pizza with doner kebab meat in the stuffed crust.

Says Mo Anwar of Zoha's Chippy in Manchester: "The idea just came in the night and we tried it out. I thought, `Why stop at cheese when you can use meat instead?' We started giving it out to people and they told us they loved it."

Local journalism is brilliant. God bless you Manchester Evening News. The comments are even better though.
Lawyers don't get paid much these days.

AND
Don't you just hate that liberal media bias towards Whalley Range?

Thai Handwell shut down while owner away at Spelling Bee contest

Another due diligence FAIL in the catering business. This here takeaway is actually in Hanwell, west London. No one noticed the spelling difference before they had that 3D sign made to order.

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Unsurprisingly, Thai Handwell is no longer in business. The *highly* literate locals boycotted it, as presumably they did the joint opposite, New York Pizza Pres.

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Never mind why Henry the hoover is painted on the wall, what the hell is a Pres? Can you eat it?

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
This side of the street is amazing. Not only is there a crap takeaway, there's a kid lurking in an alley, a lopsided sign post and no fewer than FOUR different colours of Henry hoovers in the window.

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All that suction!

Chicken shop sign that is clearly lies

Editor's Note: This establishment is no longer called this. The Trades Description Act may or may not have been involved.

The greatest eating emporium in West London

Northfields, West London, is probably best known to most as a sort of Purgatory between Central London and Heathrow Airport. It's much more than that though: just outside the tube station is a rather superb row of fast food establishments. Right, you have a Chicken Spot, next to a Pizza Spot, and in between the two there's a sign sticking out for the dearly departed Kebab Spot.
Man, just check out the clientele. You've got a kid that looks like Lethal Bizzle, with a girl that looks like Vicky Pollard. They've even got a staffy!

Even better than that, the staffy waits patiently while they go and get some chicken. You know they're going to give him a cheeky wing.

Three other amazing things about this Chicken Spot that the photos do not show:

1: It used to have a Bat-Signal style spotlight that pointlessly projected on the ground in front of the bus stop at night.

2: A friend was on an empty night bus going past when the driver stopped to jump out and get some chicken there.

3: After watching this year's League Cup Final at a nearby pub, I ordered chips in a pitta. They microwaved a stale pitta bread and gave it to me in a separate bag to the chips. Christ knows why.