Slice 'n' Brew has built up an army of followers at pop-ups across Nottingham over the last year. Now the man behind the double act of pizza and beer is gearing up to open a restaurant in the city centre.
Ryon Ishfaq will be taking over what used to be Kings Walk Kitchen, near Trinity Square - not bad for something that started out in his back garden to pass the time while furloughed from his job as a chef during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Slice 'n' Brew, for the uninitiated, is all pizza, Neapolitan and Detroit style, and beer.
Over the last year Slice 'n' Brew has teamed up with Junkyard, Neon Raptor, Black Iris Bottle and Tap and Delilah Fine Food to showcase the merits of both. The pizzas come with some pretty imaginative toppings such as coppa charcuterie, pineapple, guindilla chillies, scarmorza cheese and scotch bonnet honey.
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Then there's been the best-selling fennel sausage, wild garlic and pink fir potato and for the veggies out there, harissa aubergine, feta, garlic yoghurt and sumac onions. As for the beers, they're in the craft bracket and suit pizza perfectly. Expect IPAs, small batch lagers and artisanal lagers from local breweries Black Iris and Neon Raptor and German lagers from Braybrooke in Market Harborough.
Ryon said: "It started in lockdown in my back garden, a little project as a blog with me talking about the pizzas I was making and beer I was drinking and then it got to a point where people were asking if I sold them." He launched a 'drive-through' from his home in Sherwood once a month.
Cooking with Ooni and Roccbox pizza ovens he was rustling up 40-50 a time. "I put a menu on my Instagram stories and people booked a time to collect," said Ryon, who despite being a chef has never been a pizza chef.
"I'd describe it as Neapolitan-ish because we cook it a little bit longer than Neapolitan so it's a bit firmer and travels in a box a little bit better. It's easier to eat in your hands as opposed to a knife and fork. We also do Detroit-style pizza which is thicker, almost like focaccia style, cooked in a tray.
A few thousand Slice 'n' Brew pizzas have been munched since he launched. Every Tuesday night at beer emporium Junkyard, in Bridlesmith Walk, he was making around 100.
The thought process behind the unusual toppings? "Basically to stand out from the rest of the market. Pizza is quite a crowded market. There are a lot of places where you can get a pizza so if we were going to do it we needed to make sure that what we offer is unique. But we do appreciate the simpler stuff - a good margherita is like a cornerstone. Even the simpler stuff we do it to the best possible standard."
Ryon returned to his job as a head chef when the lockdowns were lifted, working part-time so he could do more pop-ups, before quitting a few weeks ago to fully focus on opening the restaurant. There's no structural work to make it shipshape, just a change in decor, so he hopes to open by the end of this month. A top of the range pizza oven will be installed next week.
There will be seating for around 46 to eat in and collection will be an option but not delivery in the beginning. As well as beers, wine and cocktails will be served. He got to know Kings Walk Kitchen's Kevin Wright after a series of summer pop-ups outside one of his other cafes, the Hockley Kitchen.
Looking back, Ryon said he never considered running his own business pre-pandemic because the stress wasn't appealing. "But here I am and I'm really enjoying it," he said.
One of Slice 'n' Brew's fans is food blogger My Food Hunt, aka Marcus Darwent, who described the pizzas as "one of the most fabulous and flavourful things I have eaten all year. There are taste moments that I remember forever and this is most certainly one of them."
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