Voodoo Ray’s Halloween Pizzas
The London pizza pub unveils ghoulish pumpkin slices just in time for the holiday and the UK’s PBR debut
Dalston’s Voodoo Ray’s is one of the few places in London where you can get NYC-style pizza slices. Constantly playing around with flavor combinations and inventing new pie variations, the joint has a loyal following and there’s always two or three special pizzas on its menu board. For Halloween, it has upped the ante with pumpkin-based pizzas as it unveils its new Meat Massacre and Jack O’Lantern slices, as well as a unique one-day-only Pabst pie.
The new pizzas were created by dough-spinning champions Ivan Imperiali and Finbar Curran, who came up with some truly innovative combinations. The Meat Massacre features a marinated tomato and pumpkin base, buffalo mozzarella, blood sausage and a leek and beetroot sauce, giving it a suitable gory look. The bright orange, spicy Jack O’Lantern has a curried pumpkin base and a red onion, marinated tomato and blood orange salsa, herb raita and chili topping. Both are packed with flavor and look the part, but the vegan Jack O’Lantern has a slight edge with its spicy/sweet combination. “We usually have two vegan pizzas on the menu and they sell well, which has been a bit of a surprise. People are pretty health-conscious,“ Curran says.
Voodoo Ray’s has a tradition when it comes to Halloween. “For Halloween, the pizzas are always blood-themed and I wanted to create something new with the Spanish morcella black pudding on the Meat Massacre,” says Curran. “When it comes to the Jack O’Lantern, we do a butternut squash pizza with taleggio cheese and mushroom, and pumpkin is similar, so I thought it would go well on a pizza. The pumpkin is roasted for a slightly different flavor.”
While Curran concentrated on the Halloween pizzas, colleague Imperiali created the Pabst pizza, which celebrates the UK premiere of American cult beer Pabst Blue Ribbon. Available today only, the Pabst slice is a combination of sauerkraut, bratwurst, blue cheese, mustard and dill sauce on a tomato and fior di latte base. “I was inspired by Milwaukee, Pabst’s hometown, which has a big German community,” Imperiali says, “I lived in Berlin for six years and bratwurst and sauerkraut are such traditional German food. We actually had a sauerkraut and salt beef pizza before that sold well, so I was confident this combination would work.”
The Halloween pizzas sell for £4.50 per slice and are available until the end of the week. Combine with Voodoo Ray’s RedRum slushie—made from light and dark rum, pomegranate and lime—for a suitably ghoulish gastronomic experience.
Lead image courtesy of Voodoo Ray’s, all others by Cajsa Carlson
