Fire and Stone is a stylish pizza restaurant that opened fairly recently in Covent Garden, with a second branch in Westfield shopping centre. It feels like it’s the kind of restaurant that will be opening more branches soon and will be becoming one of the big chains that has a presence just about everywhere - but for the time being there’s just two of them, and they seem to be paying attention to their food and service (as the customer survey card on each table might suggest).

The food is certainly interesting - it’s mostly pizzas here, but the available recipes succeed in being original. Spit in categories matching the world’s continents, there’s something for everyone. The Bavaria pizza (German sausage, bacon, cabbage, mozzarella, tomato sauce, sour cream and mustard) was as tasty and full-on as you’d expect from the description, and definitely delivered. The Cairo (roasted red and yellow peppers, aubergines, courgettes, goats cheese, tomato sauce and pine nuts) was very flavoursome and succeeded in showing off the different ingredients.

On the flip side, the bill was somewhat heftier that you might expect. This restaurant is attempting to be a more upmarket pizza restaurant than, say, Pizza Express; this is mirrored in a small separated bar area and corresponding cocktail menu for example. And although the average pizza is not more expensive than its counterpart in Pizza Express, Zizzi or Strada, the bill gets sightly more inflated by all the extras around the pizza.

Still, this is a pleasant restaurant, well suited to the Covent Garden spirit, the food is tasty and original (not an easy task in pizza-land) and the service polite and efficient - so it’s certainly worth a visit. I shall definitely be returning to try the Capetown and the Paris Deluxe pizzas!