Review: Pizza Punks Goes Plant-Based
Veganuary might be over, but vegan alternatives certainly aren’t.
Whether you’re a devout vegan or trying to cut down on your dairy intake for environment, ethical or health reasons, Pizza Punks (situated in the heart of the city centre) offers an excellent, specially curated vegan menu.
The San-Franciscan sourdough pizza restaurant has partnered up with award-winning alcohol brand, Panther M*lk. For a limited time only, there are two new plant-based options to try on top of the usual large cocktail offering: The White Panther and The Punk Panther.
The White Panther combines Panther M*lk’s classic vanilla flavour with coffee liqueur, oat milk and chocolate. The combination of flavours almost gives it a hazelnut vibe with a definite alcoholic kick.
Similarly, The Punk Panther combines Panther M*lk strawberry, white chocolate, topped with fresh strawberries – in case coffee isn’t your thing. Just like The White Panther, this combination of flavours gives a sweet tang, without the sickly feeling that lots of cocktails dance the line with.
Pizza Punks’ vegan options don’t stop there. Their menu boasts a wide variety of vegan options (as well as vegan alternatives) to ensure you can still enjoy the Punk experience, no matter what.
A third of their starters are vegan alternatives to classic dishes – meaning that you enjoy to your heart’s content. The Vegan Mac N’ Cheese cannot be hyped up enough. If you don’t agree with dairy, or dairy doesn’t agree with you, it is all of the deliciousness without the stress or the tummy ache. A true feat.
Similarly, the Garlic Sourdough is easily one of the best garlic breads that Leicester’s restaurants has to offer. Competition is welcome, but this bad boy takes first place. Easily. It’s fluffy, well seasoned, and cooked to perfection (so much so that I regret sharing it with the others.)
In addition to the starters, Pizza Punks offers 14 different pizzas, as well as a Create Your Own option that sets them above the rest. The cherry on top is the flat fee – meaning, you can put as much or as little as you want on it and only pay £12. You can also have it topped with vegan mozzarella at no extra cost!
Pizza Punks say: “Our sourdough is made using a mature starter culture / handmade in house daily & proofed for at least 48 hours for maximum flavour” and it really shows.
Pizza Punks don’t half-ass anything – and that courtesy is extended to their cocktail menu. They offer a whopping 18 different cocktails, as well as 7 different mocktails (which aren’t just Fancy Juice™ that most places offer.) In addition to this, their happy hour breadth is insane. Running from Sunday-Friday 12pm-6pm and 9pm-10pm as well as Saturday – 12pm-4pm & 9pm-11pm, Pizza Punks is truly a student friendly venue.
Although Pizza Punks might be on the smaller side of the restaurants that Highcross has to offer, their optimisation of space and decor more than makes up for it. Decorated with plenty of greenery, pizza-themed neon lights, and softer lighting than most eateries, Pizza Punks knows their target audience well.
Photography by Iona Wagg and Ella Johnson
Ella Johnson is a BA English graduate and postgraduate student, studying MA Digital Media & Society. She enjoys keeping up with pop culture and is particularly interested in the complex relationship between media consumption and mental health. Find her on Instagram here and Twitter here.
Iona Wagg is a MA Media, Culture & Society student and a Media & Communications graduate, interested in film, television, music, and the arts. You can find her on LinkedIn or over on Twitter.
Hi! I’m Iona and I have a lot to say, on many topics. I’m currently a ‘panic’ Master's student, focussing on Media, Culture, and Society (because let’s face it, I didn’t particularly want to graduate into this current economic climate with a media degree). I have a deep interest in photography, film, and television (as hopefully my current dissertation suggests), as well as an interest in politics, history, news, technology, arts, and literature – of which I hold a lot of opinions on, and will hopefully share here.
I’ve been studying media since I was 14 years old when I made a panic switch to Media in Year 9 when I realised that Drama really wasn’t my thing (my best performance was obviously my role of ‘Head Fly’ in Dick Whittington in Year 3 – of which I was demoted down to just regular ‘Fly’ for no apparent reason). Since then, I’ve gone on to do a lot of work within this field, both academic as well as voluntary, in order to build my CV, as well as my expertise. I’ve worked on all sorts of stuff, from assisting my old village’s political committee how to make a website (which was, unsurprisingly, excruciating) to working with young kids, helping them format their academic work and being a teaching assistant, and my personal favourite, photographing pensioners doing Ballroom dancing (bless them). But within all of these ventures I have undertaken over the last several years, I have never found an opportunity to share my opinion on random pop culture (as well as my love for Dana Scully) so this is my intention to do so here.
All this being said, I hope you enjoy what you read from me, and I look forward to sharing my views, and various streams of consciousness with you all.
22 | Leicester/Coventry
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