If you were very evil in a past life, there’s a chance that you’ll be reincarnated as that friend or colleague who always has to plan the lunches or nights out. No one wants this role; it simply befalls them. Chivvying people is a pain in the bottom, an endless WhatsApp onslaught of quibbles and variables, as folk chip in that they’re allergic to coriander, can do Tuesdays only and, “Will there be vegan cheese?” To assist these situations, I always pay note to catch-all places such as the ebulliently named Happy Face and SuperMax, which appeared late last year on the ground floor of the Everyman Cinema in Kings Cross, central London. The cinema, by the way, is a different kind of wonderful: they’ll bring a bespoke chocolate sundae or a passionfruit daiquiri to your sofa while you watch an arthouse movie, although the cost will cause some people vertigo.
Happy Face is decidedly more cheap and can’t-knock-it-down-cheerful. It’s from the brain of terribly clever restaurateurs and rebel-rousers Spiritland. You may have heard about their first project just down the road and, more recently, in the Royal Festival Hall. Spiritland are serious about music – very serious: the sound system is reputed to be world class. It’s the type of place to take anyone who would be excited by hearing A Love Supreme by John Coltrane played in its entirety on a Kuzma Stabi XL2 turntable.
Happy Face, on the other hand, is a place to take anyone – your friends, your gran and your difficult colleague Linda who likes only Pizza Express. It’s my reckoning that if you can’t spark even a glimmer of joy in the notion of a capacious, all-day, retro-feel, pocket-friendly joint with a small menu of Italian classics, cocktails and vermouths, and with a subterranean bar (the SuperMax part) playing thrusting, forgotten Europop, well, do you really deserve a meet-up?
Happy Face has 130 covers and sits invitingly inside a building painted millennial pink, or perhaps Pantone rose quartz. Mood-wise, the restaurant is a sort of space-age slant on a classic Neapolitan pizza joint by way of Arnold’s Drive-In from Happy Days.
And, yes, they do do milkshakes. Food-wise, the key is simplicity. A smattering of antipasti: good Nocellara olives, generous piles of calamari fritti, hot, crisp zucchini fritti matchsticks, a wobbly burratina or a plate of salumi. Then a choice of seven pizzas at between five and 10 quid a throw. The choice is gaspingly brief. No faff, no fuss.
Let’s be honest here: with pizza, we are all creatures of habit. Choose a margherita, a funghi, a calabrese or a pepperoni, then, if your heart desires, add other extras – mozzarella, prosciutto cotto and so on – from a side menu rather cutely titled “Extra Happiness”. Word of warning: controversially, there are no pineapple chunks available in “Extra Happiness”, possibly to avert fights.
Happy Face’s dough is fermented for 72 hours, which makes, they claim, the crust lighter, fluffier and easier to digest, although as a northern child in the 1980s, I ate even the hardest bread crusts, hoodwinked by the idea that they caused leg-growth. Happy Face also offers gluten-free dough and non-dairy cheese, so everyone, regardless of how special they are, can erect something glorious of their own volition.
My abiding memory of Happy Face is the ice-cold sgroppino cocktail made with lemon sorbet and prosecco, which would work equally well as aperitif, antipasta or dolce; they make a decent negroni, too. The parmigiana pizza is a good, sloppy-enough, chewy-enough, sating mass of parmesan and aubergine on a rich, tomato base.
We added a generous fistful of mushrooms and pushed it into our heads with several glasses of montepulciano. For pudding, there is tiramisu and revolving daily choices of gelato, although we opted for the bombolone cioccolato: two hot, freshly sugared doughnut balls with a dish of melted, orange-infused, dark chocolate to dip them in. Yes, just like Terry’s make it. If by this point you can still stand up and sway, head downstairs to SuperMax, a late-night bar with a custom-made disco ball centrepiece, velvet wall hangings and cosmic oil projectors.
Happy Face and SuperMax are not reinventing the wheel, but they are reacquainting us with the idea that good restaurants can also be born out of simplicity. In a landscape of ticketing, table-turning, high concepts and rumours of forthcoming “price surge” menus, I am down with easy. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
• Happy Face 14 Handyside Street, London N1, 020-3146 0760. Open All week, noon-11pm (Sun 10pm). About £20 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Service 8/10
Grace Dent’s restaurant reviews appear in the award-winning food magazine Feast, along with recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi and more top cooks, with the Guardian every Saturday.
