Brighton: I tried Purezza's Christmas menu and it was a festive feast

You wouldn’t normally think of a vegan pizza restaurant when picking a place for a festive feast, but Purezza in St James's Street, Brighton, has pulled out all the stops.

The restaurant is decorated with snowflakes and the massive pizza oven at the back keeps it cosy.

Even on a Monday night, it was pretty full and I was glad we had booked ahead.

I am vegetarian, but my brother is vegan so it was good to go somewhere we could both eat everything – and there was so much to choose from.

The Christmas calzone is a festive feast (Image: The Argus)

We decided to share the starter and dessert of one Christmas menu and then have one pizza from the normal menu alongside it and the waiters were flexible and let us mix and match our choices.

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To start we had dough balls with garlic and herb cheese dip. The dough was light and fresh and the serving of garlic dip was very generous – unlike in some other pizza chains.

It can be confusing when you are in a vegan restaurant and the menu says “turkey” and “Cheddar”, but we soon got used to it.

My brother chose the Christmas calzone which was basically a roast dinner wrapped in dough.

The vegan “turkey” was tasty, as were the sage stuffing and roast potatoes, but it was a little too sweet as it was covered in cranberry sauce.

It also could have done with a bit of greenery – some sprouts or broccoli maybe – to balance out the rest of the brown and beige stodginess.

I was glad I had chosen a pizza from the main menu rather than one of the Christmas ones.

As a vegetarian I normally love gooey mozzarella on my pizza – but the four seasons, which was topped with grilled artichokes, olives, wild mushrooms and smoked beetroot was flavourful enough that I didn’t notice the cheese alternative.

The only bit I didn’t love was the wild mushrooms which were a little too chewy for my liking.

The brownie and ice cream dessert (Image: The Argus)

To finish, we shared the brownie with ice cream which was a decent size between two after we had eaten so much dough.

The staff were friendly and helpful throughout and the service was good.

I’ll definitely be back and at £27.95 for three courses and pizzas starting from £7, you can’t really go wrong.