Pizza!

[Akiko]

I'm sure pizza has been discussed in this forum before but has anyone ever been to La Pizzeria on Sydney street? It's in a little complex that is part of Chelsea Farmers Market?

We were plodding along King's Road doing Christmas shopping (unfruitful shopping) and ended up feeling very hungry and stumbled into this little area with an organic food store, gift shop thing, italian wines, and cigar shop.

In the center is a place called La Pizzeria, their pizza is very good. The best I've had yet in London (although I haven't had very much). Excellent quality of ingredients, lovely crust, and delicious chili oil if you like that sort of thing (had an extra flavour in orange zest added to it).

Has anyone else been? And can anyone tell me if there is actually a farmers market that is held here? I saw no signs of it.

Akiko

[magnolia]

Haven't been to that pizza place, but I'm always interested in hearing about good pizza finds - there isn't much good pizza in London ! FYI Chelsea Farmers Market isn't a 'farmers market' in the traditional sense - at least in the six years I've been here, there's never been any kind of set up with fresh food vendors selling their 'wares' - only what you probably saw there. restaurants and little gift shop type places

[Kikujiro]

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

etc.

[magnolia]

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

Pizza Metro, Battersea Rise.

etc.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I know.

etc.

Just living in hope there's more than one place in this giant city to find edible pizza ! Somewhere on the North Bank perhaps !! Battersea, me love-a you long-a-time...but it's a bit far from W. Hampstead.

Edited December 16, 2002 by magnolia (log)

[Akiko]

Try La Pizzeria, it was good, napolitean - ish style (crust wasn't quite as bubbly, but wonderful none the less). And relatively inexpensive 8 to 11 pounds depending on the type.

The pizza we had was done with dolce latte, rocket, parma ham... YUM! That dolce latte was very good on pizza... but they had all the standards of quattro stagione, quattro formaggi, etc.

mmm, mmm

As a native Chicagoan, transplanted to New York, and recently relocated to London... I miss my pizza pie.

[Kikujiro]

Is there anywhere to eat in West Hampstead besides the Gourmet Burger Kitchen? Or indeed Hampstead?

I've been to the place Akiko describes, although not for years, but I remember it as being good. Visited on several occasions.

Many years ago I was taken to Red Pepper in W9 by a bunch of Italians. I can remember nothing about the food now (I think I liked it) but it must have been fairly decent.

My family, who are Pizza Metro regulars, sometimes go to Made in Italy when stuck around Kings Road seeing a movie. I haven't yet been -- one time I tried it was full -- but based on their visits it can't be bad. (But then you're nearly in Battersea anyway).

In the West End, Spiga is okay. The Kings Road branch is vaguely annoying.

However, these are all at least a tier below PM. (I maintain that Strada (pizzas only) is not half bad for a chain.)

Edited December 16, 2002 by Kikujiro (log)

[Tonyfinch]

Maggie, Time Out gives a red starred thumbs up to La Brocca on West End Lane.

No good?

[Jonathan Day]

Pizza Metro in Battersea Rise is very nice, and for us it's very local, so I have to join in the chorus of recommendation. The food is good, the welcome warm, and they have from time to time let our children make a mini-pizza and cook it in the wood oven. We feel lucky to live so near such a pleasant neighbourhood restaurant.

However we have had times when Pizza Metro has fallen apart on service, getting orders confused and serving one diner at a table perhaps 15 minutes before the others. Usually this happens when the restaurant is very busy and every table is full, or they are short-staffed for some reason. On one of these occasions some of the staff started to behave in an ugly manner, shouting at customers.

We continue to go to Pizza Metro. However, they are starting to experience competition; when we moved to the area the only other option in the road was a Domino's. Now there are two other places right in the neighbourhood, including one (Strada) with woodburning oven, decent product and a somewhat more "modern" menu than Pizza Metro.

Edited December 16, 2002 by JD (London) (log)

[peterpumkino]

Yes, you're so right. Pizza Metro is wonderful but, strangely enough, I've never had their pizza! This is due to the fact that I ask Alberto to "rustle me up something good" (a very successful modus operandi in Italy) and he comes up with really magic food, very Italian!

Another thing is they serve Pizza long and square. I don't particularly like this (fussy, fussy) but I am told that this is 'typical' of Napoli. However I have been to Napoli many times and, whilst the pizza's are amazing there, I've never seen square pizza!

One interesting piece of trivia: in some of the backstreet Pizzarias they serve only beer and no wine! This is because the Italians drink beer with their pizza - when they laugh at me drinking wine I always ask them what do they drink with bread, cheese and tomatoes, this stumps them as the answer is, obviously, red wine! - and what is bread, cheese and tomatoes......... but a pizza! (they still insist on drinking beer 'though).

[mogsob]

Pizza Metro is the best I've found, with Made in Italy a close second. I live right by Chelsea Farmer's Market (really poor name, considering the complete absence of farmers and the relative paucity of the only food market there), but have never been to the pizza place -- that will be remedied soon. Thanks!

Which brings up a somewhat unrelated topic. I seem to recall years ago a butcher shop on the corner of Sydney Street and the King's Road -- what happened to it?

[magnolia]

Is there anywhere to eat in West Hampstead besides the Gourmet Burger Kitchen? Or indeed Hampstead?

I've been to the place Akiko describes, although not for years, but I remember it as being good. Visited on several occasions.

Many years ago I was taken to Red Pepper in W9 by a bunch of Italians. I can remember nothing about the food now (I think I liked it) but it must have been fairly decent.

My family, who are Pizza Metro regulars, sometimes go to Made in Italy when stuck around Kings Road seeing a movie. I haven't yet been -- one time I tried it was full -- but based on their visits it can't be bad. (But then you're nearly in Battersea anyway).

In the West End, Spiga is okay. The Kings Road branch is vaguely annoying.

However, these are all at least a tier below PM. (I maintain that Strada (pizzas only) is not half bad for a chain.)

Kiku - You'd think there would be more, but West End Lane & Finchley Road are an appalling wasteland of chains and worse. Gourmet Burger Kitchen is a bright light, and "The Walnut" sort of across the road from GBK) is a bright-ish light - and is particularly vegetarian friendly. Food and prices are decent, but service is dizzy, and noise level is high.

I also like the Pepper/Olive/etc. group, I think I've been to two...both in Maida Vale/Little Venice environs, is that W9? In fact there are a few good places there and I'd eat there more often if it weren't such a pain for me to get to. As the crow flies, it's really close. And when it's nice out, I walk. But when the weather's bad, the only way to get there is to wait for a bus that turns up when it wants to, or to take the tube from Finchley Road back to Baker Street !!! and change to the Bakerloo line. How inconvenient is that??

Tony I haven't been to La Brocca...not for any particular reason, except that it seems like another faux-Italian along the lines of Bella Pasta though perhaps that's not fair. I may be one of the few, but I find Time Out to be really unreliable (though admittedly I have only used the annual Eating & Drinking Guides, I don't read the weekly - so perhaps their weekly reviews are better - I just know I've found the same errors several years' running in the E&DG, which means they either don't revisit or fact check (a pet peeve of mine).

Other than that, way farther up West End Lane - for all I know, maybe it's no longer West End Lane but turns into something else - across from the particularly pungent Fish & Chip shop (which I also haven't tried) is a little French restaurant I've always meant to try - the name of which escapes me - plus an Indian place that was *really* good but in an unfortunate location, which I just remembered...

Then there's Finchley Road itself. Ugh. A really bad Moroccan place that is periodically cited as being good...Laurent's? Flavourless cous-cous with perfunctory, bland and watery accompaniments.

Other than that, an OK Persian place (Vamak? ) that has decent food but has a depressing atmosphere, I can't quite put my finger on what it is...maybe it's the small, angled TVs that remind me of a hospital or a surveillance camera...and O2 Centre. No comment. Then down my way, the stretch that begins with Waitrose and ends with KFC...again, no comment.

Friday I'm going to Bradleys nr Swiss Cottage, a chef-owned place that looks promising...

[Tonyfinch]

across from the particularly pungent Fish & Chip shop (which I also haven't tried)

Maggie, that particularly pungent fish and chip shop is the great Nautilus. A North London institution and one of the best fish and chip shops in town. Ask for plaice on the bone or halibut and ask that they fry in egg and matzo meal for a haimishe fried fish experience.

The people who ran Laurents have moved their coucous house to Friern Barnet but for years it was reckoned the best place for brique and cous cous in London. Don't know who runs it now.

Edited December 17, 2002 by Tonyfinch (log)

[Winot]

Just living in hope there's more than one place in this giant city to find edible pizza !

Pizza Franco, Brixton Market. Unfortunately only open when the market is, i.e. Mon-Sat. during the day. Great Italian service too.

[Bloated]

Napule in Fulham Broadway (opp. Barclays Bank) has the same menu as Made in Italy- I think they are a chain of two.

Their pizzas are roughly the same standard as Pizza Metro but their antipasti not as good.

[Kikujiro]

We continue to go to Pizza Metro. However, they are starting to experience competition; when we moved to the area the only other option in the road was a Domino's. Now there are two other places right in the neighbourhood, including one (Strada) with woodburning oven, decent product and a somewhat more "modern" menu than Pizza Metro.

The competition is extraordinarily profuse: within a couple of minute's walk of Pizza Metro, there is off the top of my head Buona Sera (pizza and pasta); Zizzi (pizza and pasta); Strada (pizza and pasta); the place whose name I can't remember that has replaced Wok Wok (pizza and pasta); another two minutes gives you Need the Dough (pizza); PizzaExpress (pizza) ... and probably several others I have forgotten.

[magnolia]

Maggie, that particularly pungent fish and chip shop is the great Nautilus. A North London institution and one of the best fish and chip shops in town. Ask for plaice on the bone or halibut and ask that they fry in egg and matzo meal for a haimishe fried fish experience.

The people who ran Laurents have moved their coucous house to Friern Barnet but for years it was reckoned the best place for brique and cous cous in London. Don't know who runs it now.

Yes ! Nautilus, that's the one. And now I understand why one of my Kosher friends, when she was visiting from NYC, made a pilgrimage there (this was when I was living in Fulham).

I ate at Laurent last year and it was dire. But...now that I've gone off on this tangent, I ate at The Original Tajines last week and it was pretty good !

As for the Great 'Za, Simon I imagine part of your dislike is the 'carbs=death' factor. Another is that you just didn't grow up on 'a regular slice', consumed - almost daily as a 'snack' in your formative years - while upright and mobile, folded in half inside a grease-soaked paper plate, which in turn is inside a soggy paper bag...Pizza with cheese hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth (if it doesn't completely detach itself from the pizza - the cheese that is, not the roof of your mouth) washed down with coke from a can so cold it sticks to your lips...for a truly memorable, Proustian pizza experience...

Tony the pizza at Il Bordello is just not much better than that of Pizza Express, no wonder you don't like it. I like other stuff they have at Il Bordello, and I used to go there a lot with a girl-friend who lives across the street - we were treated like princesses. But since that one time we brought our male escorts along, we are now all but ignored when we go there...

[Charlene Leonard]

Tony I haven't been to La Brocca...not for any particular reason, except that it seems like another faux-Italian along the lines of Bella Pasta though perhaps that's not fair. I may be one of the few, but I find Time Out to be really unreliable (though admittedly I have only used the annual Eating & Drinking Guides, I don't read the weekly - so perhaps their weekly reviews are better - I just know I've found the same errors several years' running in the E&DG, which means they either don't revisit or fact check (a pet peeve of mine).

La Brocca is definitely better than Bella Pasta, it is just that the room downstairs is dire - long and thin so everyone is on top of each other and kind of dingy looking. There is a great fish and chip shop called Rock and Sole Plaice down Fairfax Road, just up from Singapore Garden which gets great reviews but I found average.

A new place called Slice in Clapham gets a decent review in Evening Standard but I am never likely to venture down there so will never know...

review

Edited December 17, 2002 by Charlene Leonard (log)

[Kikujiro]

A new place called Slice in Clapham gets a decent review in Evening Standard but I am never likely to venue down there so will never know...

review

also within 2 mins of pizza meto

[Kikujiro]

If you find yourself for some reason on Kilburn High Road, you could do much worse locally than the pizza at Casareccia.

Edited March 23, 2003 by Kikujiro (log)

[Miss J]

Good heavens, they deliver to useful postcodes and everything. I'll definitely give this one a try.