Pizza Party: Civerinos and the romance of adulthood

In TV and films, pizza is a symbol of being a young, cool person on the go – and spots like Civerinos help that romantic vision of adulthood come true

Article by Anahit Behrooz | 05 Aug 2024
  • Civerinos Slice

When I was little, people in TV shows would always be eating pizza, grouped around a greasy box or pulling a slice and moving across the room, or to the next room, or outside. Mealtimes at my house were a well-organised affair – everyone sat down together, everyone ate together – and although that was lovely and probably developmentally extremely beneficial, I always felt pulled to the glamour of the pizza box and the strange and silly freedom it symbolised. It was, to my mind, the ultimate Food On The Move; not in the sense of being portable, but in the sense of flexing around the rhythms of people’s intimacies – clutched at a party, abandoned in the middle of a post-breakup debrief, the centrepiece of a friendship group.

The ways we imagine adulthood to be as children rarely come true, but when I think of all the ways I became a person in Edinburgh, pizza is so often there too. There’s the Civerinos pizza sitting in a back office midway through the festival, and a person I had never met before telling me to get a slice, and feeling so out of my mind about it (the pepperoni, FYI, with the green bite of fresh parsley sprinkled on top) that I ordered it again the next day. Realising I’d fallen in love and crawling into my best friend’s bed with a margherita from Razzo, the crust puffed impossibly high. Running out to Pizzeria 1926 halfway through a party and returning with a pizza fritte that we pulled apart with our hands. Civerinos, again, by the slice – topped with crisp fried chicken, hot sauce laid on thick – in a booth, then taken away to sit in the last heat of a summer night. There is, to me, even in deep adulthood, something so unbelievably romantic about it. Charcoal-blistered dough, sauce and cheese dripping off the sides, intimacy without ceremony.


Civerinos Slice, 49 Forrest Rd, Edinburgh and 47-49 Figgate Ln, Portobello
Forrest Rd open daily 11am-11pm; Portobello open Mon-Thu 3-9pm, Fri-Sun midday-9pm
civerinos.com / @civerinos_official

This article is from issue one of GNAW, our new food and drink magazine dedicated to sharing stories from across Scotland’s food scene. Pick up a free copy from venues across Scotland, and follow GNAW on Instagram @gnawmag