I hadn’t been to Pizza Express for years so when the restaurant got a revamp inspired by a Kingston designer, I was only too glad to pop along.

Inside Kingston’s Rotunda complex, the design is a homage to Sir Terence Conran, creator of Habitat, who was born in the borough.

The roomy restaurant shaped in a circle with dim lighting was busy on a Thursday evening, but service was fast and friendly.

As a lover of all things carbohydrate, I ordered some classic dough balls which came with a delicious gooey garlic dip. They went down a treat.

Your Local Guardian:

Dough balls with a garlic dip

As for selecting mains, there was a lot of choice and I felt myself torn between what looked like mouth-watering salads (how is that even possible?), hearty pastas, thin pizzas, followed by even thinner pizzas and folded pizzas.

But being the chilly-lover that I am, I opted for the Calabrese, a new addition to the menu and pegged the pizzeria’s “hottest pizza” inspired by the food in Italian town Calabria.

It boasted spicy Calabrese sausage, hot soft nduja sausage, red chillies and even roquito peppers among its ingredients. And I won’t lie, it was probably the best thin crust I had tasted in a long time.

A dinner date that came along went for the safe Pollo Forza, a chicken creation that has been on the menu for some time, but he was left with real food envy.