Poppy the Beetle's new nose!

So, on Saturday last after running some clandestine errands in the morning, we ended up in Dorking for our Valentines day lunch about an hour earlier than intended - which, incidentally was going to be in the Pizza Express where we had our very first meal out together - so we took the opportunity to wander around the charity shops (Flyingpops scored some bargain items of clothing and I got a bunch of interesting books), but the real gem of the day was a magnetic red nose for Poppy -

- which defied my expectations by both staying on at speed, and not being stolen (yet) by any tiny miscreant...

Looks rather good doesn't it? If you want one you can get them for £2 at Oxfam... ;)

Lunch was superb, I can't believe how much the menu has changed since I last visited (which admittedly was probably over a year ago), for the starter I had the antipasto -

- which had three different kinds of cured meat (including an excellent Italian salami), toasted bread, sun dried tomatoes and rocket (an excellent combination) and lots of grated parmesan, followed by their new pizza range, the Romana (which are rolled much thinner and thus super crispy) -

- specifically the "Etna" which *was* (as promised) extremely spicy, but actually could have done with a few more toppings, it was like working through lots of spicy cheese and tomato followed by mini taste explosions when you hit a spicy pepper or little pile of ground beef...still, a really nice change as the menu at Pizza Express had got a little bit tired over the years... ;)