What is the food you would never grow tired of? If you ask me that question, I would have zero doubts. Nope, none. It’s pizza! How can you get tired of a thin, yet light and airy dough, a beautifully crunchy crust, perfectly plum tomato sauce, juicy mozzarella? I love pizza and I need to satisfy my craving at least once a week. But… there is a BUT. It needs to be good, really good! After many tests and trials (many of them positive, some not so much), here are my absolute favourite pizza places in London. Hope you love them as much as I do!
Zia Lucia
Photo Credit: Aglassfullof
Zia Lucia is a high-quality, Italian approved pizzeria with three venues in London. Their main strength is definitely the dough, which is slow fermented for 48 hours and baked in hand-crafted wood-fired ovens. You can choose between 4 kinds of dough: vegetable charcoal, with a captivating all-black look and highly digestible, gluten-free, for a crispy, light alternative, wholemeal, healthy and with a distinctive nutty taste, and finally classic, safe choice which will never disappoint. Zia Lucia is not only the bespectacled smiley face in the pizzeria logo, but also the aunty of the founder Gianluca who, together with Claudio, decided to bring the family spirit and shared love for good food to London. The family commitment is clearly shown in the friendly and no-nonsense approach to service. You can choose among a list of pizza which is varied but will not make you feel confused and overwhelmed: you will find the simple Margherita and Marinara, but also a more complex mix of flavours, like the Andrea Pirlo (mozzarella, gorgonzola, apple and truffle oil) or the Arianna (mozzarella, sausage, taleggio cheese, pecorino cheese and truffle honey). The fact that at Zia Lucia you can wash down your pizza with a Menabrea or an Ichnusa is just icing on the cake: try it and you’ll never go back.
Zia Lucia – 157 Holloway Rd, London, N7 8LX / 61 Blythe Road, London, W14 0HP. They only accept bookings for groups of 8+ people.
Radio Alice
Photo Credit: Aglassfullof
Radio Alice is definitely one of the most interesting pizza places in London: the 24-hour fermented sourdough results in light and airy pizzas… you could easily eat two of them without feeling too full! The toppings are also extremely high quality and the menu clearly takes into consideration seasonality of ingredients: you can order your classic margherita, but I would suggest to be bold and try their most peculiar combinations: prosciutto di Parma, burrata, mozzarella fiordilatte e orange olive oil or my absolute favourite, butternut squash, porcini mushrooms, mozzarella fiordilatte, Parmigiano Reggiano and sage.
Radio Alice – 16 Hoxton Square, London, N1 6NT / 67 Venn St, London, SW4 0BD
Pizza Pilgrims
Photo Credit: Aglassfullof
Let’s finish this list with a classic, easy London favourite, because not all pizza chains are evil in my book: you can find 9 Pizza Pilgrim venues in London. Brothers James e Thom Elliot, started a real pilgrimage in 2011 and travelled all over Italy on a classic Ape Caravan: they started from Reggio Calabria and ended up in Turin with the purpose of capturing all the secrets to obtain a perfect Italian pizza… doesn’t it sound like a dream mission to undertake? I’d say it was worth it, because Pizza Pilgrim offers a simple, good neapolitan-style pizza, light and slowly fermented. I tried the London Bridge and the Covent Garden venue and I have not been disappointed!
Pizza Pilgrims – various locations in Londra and one in Oxford.
