'More than a lunchtime option': Purely Slice, Birkdale, reviewed

What: Purely Slice

Where: 37 Liverpool Rd, Birkdale, Southport PR8 4AG

Food / Drink type: Pizza and focaccia sandwiches

When: Tues to Sat: 12 - 10pm // Sun 12 - 8pm // Mon: Closed

Independent or chain: Independent

Sometimes just a tad is all you're after.

The whole shebang has its time and place, but often it's nice to hit the spot without pummelling it into dust. 

So when I arrived in Birkdale, in the hinterland between lunch and an early dinner booking, my stomach rumbling from lack of lunch but dinner too far in the distance, I needed just a bit of something. 

Decor

Purely Slice is laid out in the kind of clean, chequered tiling that you assume every New York pizzeria is wrapped in by law. With an open kitchen and '00' bases the size of table tops being slid into ovens, it's all enticingly on show. 

Signage with the boomer-baffling punctuation of 'X' hints at some marriage between New York City and another corner of the world. Where? Naples, naturally.

Main Event

Here it was helpful to just wander in, gaze into the glass of the counter and see where your appetite lands, pointing at the slices like so many unsuspecting lobsters.

I decided on nduja, pepperoni's bougie brother, and a pot of that increasingly common accompaniment, chilli honey. The slice spilled over the sides of the paper plate, such was its size, and it had all the hallmarks of a proper Neapolitan pizza; thin and floppy with a sturdy but chewy crust pocked with char marks from the heat of the oven. A sweet tomato base, littered with little molehills of nduja and hillocks of mozzarella, it's a pleasant little landscape to sit and explore. The chilli honey, along for the ride, was a bit like the travelling companion you wish you'd left at home. The honey was too sweet, who knew?

Judgement Day

This was part of Purely Slice's midweek deal, 'Slurp and Slice' - not my favourite phrase -  where a slice of pizza and refillable soda is £5, and it trumps a lunchtime meal deal any day. It seems much more than a lunchtime option, somewhere locals have begun to make their default pizza place. When I next land in Birkdale, I'll have to find the time to have the full shebang. 

Purely Slice, 37 Liverpool Rd, Birkdale, Southport PR8 4AG