A Leggera up?

Walking past Pizza Express this morning, I saw one of their advertisement boards broadcasting their new ‘lighter’ range, Leggera. Pizzas at 500 cals a pop, it proclaims.

I’m actually not generally a fan of Pizza Express, and the husband definitely isn’t. (“Portion sizes too small,” he grumbles.) But this new development makes me willing to give it another shot.

Upon a bit of investigation on their website, I realise that the main chunk of calories has been lost by removing a chunk of the pizza itself! “The hole at the centre of each Legerra pizza is filled with a tasty salad of baby spinach, rocket and tomatoes, finished with a drizzle of our light dressing,” they say.

Well no wonder they’re lower cal. Not that it puts me off, mind, I like a good salad.

Here are the Leggera pizzas, all 500 calories, and I’ll spare you Pizza Express’ flowery Prose…

Margherita
Mozzarella, tomatoes marinated in olive oil, garlic, oregano, basil

Vitabella
Mozzarella, asparagus, chargrilled vegetables, red and yellow peppers, oregano

Gustosa
Cotto ham, mozzarella, Portobello mushroom, yellow peppers, thyme

To me, the Gustosa sounds the best. I’d go for vitabella but anytime outside of April/May/June I’d be wary of the asparagus…

The Leggera range also offers two starters – an insalata verde, which has green beans, peas, mint and baby spinach with dressing and grana padano for only 60 cals, and an crostini pomodoro, which has, you guessed it, tomatoes and bread, for 170. To me the former one sounds more enticing.

And should you want dessert, they have a frozen vanilla yogurt with strawberries, some coulis and a chocolate straw for 180 cals.

If you want to compare these to the rest of the Pizza Express range, they have all of the calorie counts [pdf] on their website.

So what do you think? Will you give it a go? I’m thinking maybe just once, but I’ll have to convince Pete first…