Six of One: Pizza Nerdery
Six of One: Pizza Nerdery
Some of London's best home pizza, cold soba noodles, Malabar biryani and more
Hello and welcome back to Vittles Restaurants.
Six of One is a column dedicated to London restaurant recommendations. In each issue, six writers will share a restaurant, bakery, cafe or takeaway spot that they believe deserves to be better known. You can find the full Six of One back catalogue here.
Today’s Six of One recommendations are from Alex Douglas, Hester van Hensbergen, Mark Corbyn, Yanyu Sun, Jonathan Nunn, and Shekha Vyas.
To read all the recommendations, as well as the back catalogue, please subscribe below.
1. Your Neighbour Za
Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours. Having recently moved to the suburban end of Wood Green, I was scouting out the abundance of good food within walking distance of my new home. Pinching and pulling at Google Maps, I saw some icons pop into the proximity like fetch quests in an open-world RPG. One of these turned out to be a guy called Youness, who slings pizzas from his front door twice a week. A new world of domestic takeaways opened up before me. Two days later I find myself standing on the threshold of his terraced house being passed a misshapen jewel of a pie. Five minutes later I am in my living room asking, ‘How can crust be the best part of a pizza?’ Youness has taken care to source and accumulate all the elements that ensure the toppings are delicious, but the science behind the crust, which took him four months to master, is what widened the Overton window of my pizza pleasure and ensures that I am now a constant nuisance on his doorstep.
At Your Neighbour Za, Youness offers a range of pies but the standouts are the eponymous ’Za (tomato and cheese, satisfyingly rich and crisp), the Skog (sautéed mushroom and dill, pockmarked with luscious, oily puddles) and the oft sold-out Kimchi (just on the right side of the delicious/abomination divide). The provenance of the three flours and four cheeses on each pizza makes this as close as you will get to a ‘British pizza’. Only the tomato sauce is of Italian origin, which speaks only to Youness’s uncompromising approach. Each pizza is available as either vegetarian (zero animal rennet) or vegan. My preference is for the fully lactic option but I have accidentally ordered the alternative and couldn’t much tell the difference. As a vegan, Youness has never eaten one of his own cheese-based pizzas and doesn’t know how good they are. He uses his partner Zelda as a taste-tester in his quest to become the local community’s premier pizzaiolo. He may already be just that. Alex Douglas
238 Sirdar Rd, N22 6QX
Behind the paywall: A rare sighting of soba noodles in Kew, gizzards and getting more than you bargained for in Vauxhall, a soon-to-close Chinese canteen in King’s Cross, revisiting a Filipino institution in Earl’s Court, Malabar biryani in Stratford, and more.
