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Temper restaurant in Covent Garden is one of the three restaurants in a mini-chain by chef Neil Rankin serving two different types of pizzas, charcuterie and lots more. Even though there are three Temper restaurants dotted around London (the other two in the city and in Soho), all of them have different menus as well as their own special theme. All the restaurants specialise in BBQ and open fire pit cooked food, but each with a different twist.
Temper Covent Garden is the newest restaurant of the three and specialises in wood-fired pizzas, charcuterie and ragu (there’s even a vegetarian variety!) as well wine and vermouth. You could probably already tell that there’s a bit of an Italian theme going on here and I’m most definitely here for that!
The decor is very sleek and slightly corporate, but in a fun way. The tables are black marble, chairs are bright blue and part of the walls are made out of shiny dark blue bricks.
The overriding colour theme is blue and silvery grey and the big bar in the middle dominates the space. There’s lots of space to sit by the bar too if you want to see how your food was prepared – the kitchen is completely open plan!
The pizza is made in a wood-fired oven and served in two different styles: round and thin Romana bases with cheese spread all the way to the edge and square Detroit style pizzas which the menu describes as ‘deep, cheesy and light’. We only tried the Romana pizzas, but the Detroit ones do sound pretty wonderful too!
As the Temper family is heavily focused on barbequing I never visited the other two restaurants as the menus seemed quite meaty. However, that’s exactly why I was so excited about this newcomer: they actually have quite a few vegetarian and even vegan dishes on the menu! That said, the online menu has a lot of vegan pizza varieties but I don’t remember seeing all of these on the menu when we actually visited, so this might be a good thing to check in advance if you do end up going (which you totally should do)!
We both went for the Romana base pizzas (thin and crispy is my favourite!) and I chose the vegan Marinara (just yummy tomato sauce and herbs, no cheese) and Jim went for the Margherita. How boring are our choices?!
We both *loved* our pizzas and would happily go back again to try out more of their varieties. These pizzas were really cheap (Marinara was £6 and Margherita was £9) but keep in mind that if you order ones with more toppings or meat, the price goes up quite a bit. It is a bit of a fancy place, after all!
The tastiest garlic butter dip ever!
The Italian theme continues on the drinks menu too and we just HAVE to talk about the spritzes. There are so many! And they are such unique combinations too: there are, amongst others, a peach fritz with whiskey, a mezcal spritz (pictured above, on the right!) with smoky mezcal and SO many more!
They also do the classic Aperol Spritz on tap, as well as an amazing cocktail called Frozen Mr Faulty (on the left in the photo above) which was basically a daiquiri in slushy form and tasted a-ma-zing!
