With extra anchovies

'Pizza analysts were quickly on the scene of the pizza disaster, and were all trying to answer some of the big pizza-oriented questions'

At first sight, it looked as if the power of the press was even more daunting than we thought. In The Spectator, two weeks ago, this newspaper's Deborah Ross wrote an anguished piece in which she accused the PizzaExpress family of restaurants of dropping their standards. The places were not so much fun any more, she said, but, above all, their pizzas were not as big and generous as they used to be.

The response was immediate. A week later, in the business pages of The Independent (Tuesday 25 June), there was a headline: "PizzaExpress sales fall." Shares in the company, it said, had slumped by 16 per cent.

That was a pretty drastic reaction, and pizza analysts were quickly on the scene of the pizza disaster, trying to answer some of the big pizza-oriented questions. Had the pizza-buying public noted Miss Ross's reservations and turned elsewhere? Had they deserted en masse to Pizza Cave or Pizza Parlour or Pizza Wagon? Had they heeded her recommendation and turned away from the big boys and gone to the small, local, family-run pizza place instead?

Or had they just decided it was time to give spaghetti another go?

Well, I am no pizza expert, but I can bring one interesting piece of evidence to this puzzle.

Round about two years ago, I, too, began to suspect that PizzaExpress pizzas were not as big as they used to be, and less generous with their toppings. I had been a regular customer at PizzaExpress restaurants for many years, had often heard wonderful jazz at the PizzaExpress in Soho's Dean Street – the founder of PizzaExpress, Peter Boizot, is a dedicated jazz supporter – and had even written on various occasions for the magazine that Peter Boizot runs. I liked the places and their ambience. But I couldn't help feeling that the pizzas were getting smaller.

Then the Bristol-based magazine Venue (the West Country equivalent to Time Out) ran a piece accusing PizzaExpress of lowering standards and doing smaller, less generous pizzas, and, encouraged by this, I, too, wrote a piece in this paper voicing the same suspicions. The response was immediate. PizzaExpress executives wrote to us denying all wrong-doing and challenging me to a pizza-testing session, which would have proved nothing, so I turned them down and started doing what Miss Ross has just recommended, ie deserting PizzaExpress and going to small, independent places when I felt like a pizza.

(In Bath, which is our big local town, there is, of course, a PizzaExpress. They are all over the place. There are two dozen of them in Surrey alone. But in Bath, there is also a place called the Firehouse Rotisserie that serves California-inspired food and has a pizza oven from which come forth pizzas better than I ever remember PizzaExpress serving. PizzaExpress ingredients tend to come from a litany of ham, olives, mushrooms, anchovies, etc. The Firehouse descriptions alone are more tasty than that. How about "Gorgonzola, smoked bacon, parmesan and fresh sage"? Or "Artichoke hearts, pesto, sundried tomatoes, parmesan and fresh rocket"? Or "Barbecue chicken, sweet red onion and fresh coriander"? Or "Provence- herb roasted vegetables, goat's cheese, olives and fresh thyme"?)

My feeling about all this is that, although I am convinced that PizzaExpress pizzas are not as big as they used to be, there may well also be a process whereby pizzas seem smaller as we get older. There are lots of processes like this. We all know the one about policemen looking younger as time goes by, but there are others. Jazz groups always play their old hits faster and faster as they get older. People like their drinks less sweet as they get older. Snow is not as snowy as it used to be, and summers not as summery. ("What a delightful moon tonight," said Oscar Wilde to the American family he was staying with in the Southern States. "You should have seen it before the Civil War," growled the father.)

And another process is that, when you find a great, local, one-off establishment, it will sooner or later become a chain. The Firehouse Rotisserie already has a branch in Bristol. Schwarz Brothers, who have two shops in Bath and sell hamburgers so good that McDonald's wouldn't even recognise them as hamburgers, will no doubt one day multiply. Why, I can remember the days when there were only two or three PizzaExpresses in London and none anywhere else.

And they had bigger and tastier pizzas then, I swear. I may be subject to the delusions of the ageing process, but Miss Ross is too young to imagine things. When the pizza police come to get her, I will gladly stand in the stocks with her as they throw tomatoes, mozzarella and anchovy topping at us. If PizzaExpress can afford to spare them.