Tag: thin crust

The Best Pizza in London

  October 17th, 2018

London, UK

I’m lucky to travel to London twice a year for work (and some fun, too). Since my colleagues have discovered my love of pizza, they’ve made a point to bring me around to some of the best places in London.  Here are my top 6, ranked.

6. Delfino

This was a last minute stop on my most recent trip to London. Eric had just arrived with James (their first times in London!), and we were looking for a good restaurant to try for dinner. Delfino was a recommendation on our instagram and we liked that it didn’t just have pizza. Also, it looked to have a good wine list. We were not disappointed. Delfino is located in Mayfair, and makes a great thin crust pizza. We split the Caprina pizza, which had sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, pine nuts, and goat’s cheese. It was delicious. The staff was so friendly and accommodating of us and our baby.

You probably won’t find this pizza on any “best of” London lists, but we really liked the variety of pizzas on the menu, and the restaurant in general.

5. Sacro Cuore

I visited Sacro Cuore last October with some friends. It was a bit outside of the city, but I never mind getting out of town a little bit, especially for good pizza. They serve authentic Neapolitan pizzas – and good ones. I got a Bufalina (as usual, are you surprised?). Unfortunately, I couldn’t partake in the wine drinking here, as I was about 2 1/2 months pregnant with James, but my friends said it was decent. I don’t think they care too much about wine quality, though.

They also do serve some starters and salads, but we went right for the pizzas. The one in the back that my friend got had fresh Parmesan on top – which is always a welcome addition to any pie.

4. Homeslice

Homeslice comes in at #4, mainly because it’s been a few years since I’ve been there. From what I can remember, the pizza was really good. I also remember that I went there after a pub night, where we hadn’t had dinner, and so we were all very, very hungry. I should really go back again. Since it was so late when we got there, we got the pizzas to go and we ate them in the courtyard outside the restaurant.

These pizzas are large – 20″. There are a few locations around London. This one had salami, rocket (arugula, for Americans) and parm. We also had one with mushrooms, ricotta, pumpkin seed, and chili flakes. That one was awesome.

3. Franco Manca

Franco Manca is probably my most frequented pizzeria around London. There are several reasons for this. First, there was one right on my walk back from the office to my hotel. Second, there is now one right across the street from my new office. On past trips, I would get it takeaway and eat it in my hotel room. Unfortunately, that meant never getting a good picture. This most recent trip, my colleagues and I went for lunch to the location right near Kings Cross.

I almost got my usual tomato, mozz, and basil pie, but I decided to branch out and get the Veg special, which was a white pizza. These are sourdough pizzas, and the crust is amazing. The ingredients are all specially sourced from Italy and are usually seasonal.

2. Yard Sale Pizza

It’s not a Neapolitan pizza, and it’s not a fancy sourdough crust. But Yard Sale Pizza comes in at #2 on my list. It reminds me the most of a NY-style, although not quite the same. They now have a few locations around London.  My friends brought me here for lunch the day that I landed, and I honestly can’t think of a better way to tackle impending jetlag.

This one is half a margherita and half a TSB (tender stem broccoli, manchego, pine nuts, and garlic). The TSB is possibly one of the best flavor-combo pizzas in London that I’ve had. My friends also liked it here because they have pizzas with vegan cheese. I didn’t try that one, because I couldn’t turn down the regular mozzarella and manchego on these two.

1. L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele

Finally, we’re ending with my favorite pizza in London. My friends had told me about this place for over a year before I finally made it on this most recent trip. L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele is originally from Naples. It’s a famous pizzeria in Italy, and it’s getting the same reputation in London. While I’m usually not a huge fan of traditional Neapolitan pizza, this pizza is phenomenal. The pies are large, and the ingredients are fresh. There is the perfect amount of cheese and the perfect amount of sauce to make the pizza droopy but not soupy.

My friend also tried the traditional fried pizza here – it’s like a calzone. Worth trying.

Let me know if I missed any! I’ll be heading back to the UK in a few months and I may have more to add to this list!

Barbara1 Comment

#87 Gruppo Thin Crust

February 14th, 2018

Manhattan, NYC

We’re all for Valentine’s Day celebrations, but we don’t like to deal with the whole finding reservations/fancy dinner thing. Usually, we end up at home with take out, watching something on TV. This year, we decided to go out for dinner but we wanted to keep it simple. We ended up stopping by a new addition to the 2017 Best Pizza list, Gruppo.  It was the only pizza place in NYC on the new list that we hadn’t yet been to.

We wanted to avoid any Valentine’s Day rush, so we went for an early dinner.  We ended up ordering two personal sized pizzas, the Shroomtown, which is what the Daily Meal recommended, and the Giordino. We both felt we needed some veggies after all of the chocolate that we had been eating all day. We also tried the Bruschetta appetizer.

The app was really good. It was served on a crispier flatbread, just like the pizza crust, but topped with pesto and a huge piles of fresh tomatoes. We recommend it and we didn’t really miss the thick bread that’s usually served with Bruschetta. We were glad to still have plenty of room for pizza.

The pizzas were good, too. The crust is so thin here, almost like a cracker. We really like a thin crust sometimes because we don’t leave feeling so full. The mushrooms were flavored so well on the Shroomtown, we both loved them. And the crust, while thin, really holds up to the toppings. At the same time, we both agreed that a thin crust makes a pizza harder to stand out in the crowd of NYC pizza. When confronted with the massive amount of pizza in NYC, it would be hard to justify going to one of these thin crust places.

Also, we were wondering why Gruppo made the list instead of the other restaurants in the chain: Tappo or Spunto (both of which we’ve been to), or Posto or Vezzo. They all taste identical to us. Actually, Tappo and Spunto both have a cuter atmosphere, in our opinion. I’m not sure why the owners couldn’t just pick one name and go with it – instead they have five different websites! We actually didn’t realize they were all the same until we saw the logo for Gruppo in the window. And then saw the menu, which is identical (as far as we can tell). We actually had the Shroomtown at Tappo late last year.

In any case, if you’re in the mood for thin crust pizza, these places are great. It’s nice to switch it up sometimes. We’d maybe go back, but probably to Spunto or Tappo, which are both closer to our offices (and to the subway).

To visit:

Gruppo Thin Crust
98 Avenue B
New York, NY 10009

BarbaraLeave a comment

#91 Zaffiro’s

May 25th, 2016

Milwaukee, WI

Our last pizza stop in Milwaukee was one of the classics – Zaffiro’s. Zaffiro’s has been making pizza since the 1950’s, and it has a solid following in the city. It was predominately a bar when it opened, but it was able to expand into the shop next door in the 70’s and it has stayed in the same location ever since, with the same family as owners.

Again, this is Milwaukee-style pizza, and had a super thin cracker crust. The crust holds up to the cheese and toppings here, and there was plenty of both. There was more cheese on this pizza than there had been at Pizza Man, and the cheese layer was definitely thicker than the crust itself.

We ended up choosing to order the “EBF” or “Everything but Fish” pizza. It came with both pepperoni and sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and onions. Also, black olives, which we picked off. I guess we could have ordered it without olives, but we really don’t like to be difficult, and we already had requested that the meat stay on one side of the pizza.

So, the big question is obviously: which pizza did we like better? We both gave the slight edge to Pizza Man. Mainly because it felt fresher and had more unique topping combinations. If you are looking for the traditional pizza (with the Milwaukee-style crust), then Zaffiro’s is where you should go.

There are now offshoots of Zaffiro’s pizza around Wisconsin and neighboring states. Similar to the abundance of Patsy’s around NYC, these seem to be related somehow to the original and they bake similarly-styled pizzas. However, they also have a different website from the original Zaffiro’s that we went to. We’d be interested to see how the other Zaffiro’s Pizzeria & Bar compares.

If anyone is really up for a challenge, those alternate Zaffiro’s have a good one: the “Big Z” challenge.  (Or at least this was going on last year – they may have discontinued it by now). I think that Eric and I could have finished 4 square feet of pizza, especially with that thin crust. But that would have had to be its own road trip.

Also, according to this article, the average person eats 46 pieces of pizza per year. Um, I think we are wayyy past that….

To visit:

Zaffiro’s
1724 North Farwell Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53202

BarbaraLeave a comment

#81 Pi Pizza

May 22nd, 2016

St. Louis, MO

It was easy for us to drive around the Northeast to try the pizzas on the Daily Meal list. We took the opportunity to fly to the West Coast to visit friends, and drove down to Florida to visit Eric’s brother. So, that just left the Midwest. And there were A LOT of pizza places in the Midwest. There were a couple of problems here:

  1. We didn’t have money to fly every weekend to a different city in the Midwest.
  2. Doing this would have taken too much time and too many weekends.
  3. We don’t know anyone who lives in these cities.

So, our solution? We planned an epic pizza cross-country road trip. We decided to hit all of the major cities in the Midwest that had pizza places on the list, most for only a night or so. It was going to be a lot of driving. It was going to be A LOT of pizza. It was going to be awesome.

We left from NJ on a Friday night and drove out to stay in Pittsburgh overnight with friends before we made it to the first city on our pizza list, St. Louis.

We got to St. Louis late in the evening. It was about 9 hours from Pittsburgh, and we had to make a few stops along the way. We made it to town in time for a late dinner, which we had at Pizzeoli. This place wasn’t on the list, but they follow our Instagram and their pizzas always looked really good. It didn’t disappoint – they serve good Neapolitan pies!

We checked in to our hotel for the evening and then woke up bright and early to check out the city. We walked to the Arch, went to the original Panera for coffee, and then made our first pizza stop from the list at Pi Pizza. There are a few locations of Pi around the city, but we had tickets to the Cardinals game at 1 pm, so we stopped at the location right downtown.

Pi has a nice selection of pizzas, both thin crust and deep dish. We figured that we’d be eating enough deep dish when we stopped in Chicago, so we went with the traditional thin crust here. The pizza that sounded really interesting to us was the Lincoln Park. This one had mozz, zucchini, tomato, and feta. We’d never had feta on a pizza. We loved the thin crust and were pleasantly surprised how much we liked the feta on the pizza. It was the perfect light lunch before the baseball game.

We made it over to the stadium for the start of the game. Unfortunately, the Cards were losing. It was not a good day for them. Around the 6th or 7th inning, we had had enough of the game and the sun, and Eric had a *brilliant* idea. You’ll have to wait until our next post to hear all about it 🙂

St. Louis was a great place to start our road trip. We really liked the two pizzas we tried here. On a side note, the pizzeolis at Pizzeoli have a new place they just opened in St. Louis that is serving New York-style slices, Pizza Head. It looks awesome, and if we ever find ourselves back in St. Louis we will definitely be stopping there.

Also, fun fact: Pi Pizza is supposedly one of Obama’s favorites. You have good taste, Obama.

To visit:

Pi Pizza
610 Washington Ave
St. Louis, MO 63101

BarbaraLeave a comment