It wasn’t always so complicated. There was the simple pleasure of a frozen French-bread pizza, a special find at Sainsbury’s. Or enjoying a slice from the small Pizza Hut stand in Leicester Square, a highlight of a school trip to an otherwise uninspiring West End play.
The real treat was the American-style pizza from Pizza Express on Fulham Road in London – to a certain ten-year-old, it felt as exotic as the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Fast forward a few decades, and there are as many varieties of pizza as there are witless food vloggers grifting for their next free lunch.
Pizzas largely fall into two categories: the Neapolitan with its thin, soft base and airy, blistered edges, and the New York classic, known for its thin and slightly crispy yet chewy crust, perfect for folding and eating with one hand.
Oh, then there’s the mass-market version, which is all about cheap ingredients piled high.
Had I the space and you the appetite, I could bang on about Detroit and New Haven styles, Roman al taglio and Chicago deep dish.
However, here we’re focusing on the beloved British takeaway pizza, our second most popular takeaway option after Chinese, representing nearly £4 billion in market share.
To qualify, pizzerias need a minimum of six locations and must offer delivery services. Although true pizza aficionados will tell you that the finest pizzas are consumed moments after emerging from the oven.
So, I ordered a pepperoni (or the nearest they had to it) from each one, grabbed a napkin and got ready to tuck in…
Zia Lucia
This small but ever-growing Neapolitan-style chain is one of my favourites – and deserves to be attacked with knife and fork.
The dough is slow-fermented for 48 hours, meaning you get real texture and chew, and a good lightness, too.
The base is thin and tender, the rim puffy with delightful blisters, and the fior di latte mozzarella (crafted from cow’s milk instead of buffalo) bubbles on top of a punchy, fresh tomato sauce.
I like the traditional margherita with extra spianata salami.
There are other doughs available, too, including a black one made with charcoal, if that floats your boat. 9/10
Pizza Pilgrims
Like Zia Lucia, these are Neapolitan-style pizzas, and damn fine they are, too.
The cornicione billows lavishly, and the crust is wonderfully airy with just the right amount of char.
The tomato sauce, made with San Marzano tomatoes – as is right and proper – is fresh, pert and has a splendid bite, while the ingredients are top-notch. Mozzarella is fior di latte, while the pepperoni is every bit the equal of Pizza Express (below).
It truly is a Great British Neapolitan pizza. 9/10
Pizza Express
Proust had his madeleines, I have that pepperoni-covered delight, the American Hot.
OK, over the years, Pizza Express has been accused not only of shrinking its pizzas, but also of coming up with some fairly half-baked ‘innovations’.
I’m looking at you, Pizza Leggera, with your awful salad-filled hole and underwhelming, ‘thinner, crispier’ crust.
And there is also no place for chicken on pizza. Ever. No, the key to Pizza Express is never to stray from the well-trodden path: the classic American Hot with jalapenos – the chillies not too fierce – plus sublime discs of crisp pepperoni that have never been bettered.
This is a taste of my childhood, the very Zen of British pizza, with its thin, mildly chewy crust and bog-standard mozzarella, seasoned with a fistful of nostalgia.
Sure, the purists may look down their nose, but what do they know? A bona fide classic. 8/10
Franco Manca
When it first started in 2008, in a small shop in Brixton Market, Franco Manca was an absolute game changer, creating one of the first (if not the first) genuinely Neapolitan pizzas to be sold in London.
Prices were cheap and the dough and topping ingredients were exceptional.
Founders Giuseppe Mascoli and the late, great Bridget Hugo got it just right. Queues stretched out the doors.
Then the money men came in, bought the company and started opening sites by the dozen. The quality dropped and most of us moved on.
But this pizza was a lot better than I remembered it being a few years back, with a good crust, decent tomato sauce and some excellent spicy salami.
Pretty decent, if not quite on a par with Pizza Pilgrims and Zia Lucia. 7/10
Ask Italian
While not offensive, this really is achingly dull pizza, with a very average, thin, crisp crust, industrial mozzarella and fairly dreary pepperoni.
It reminds me of a supermarket pizza, which is not a good thing at all.
I would describe it as the Coldplay of pizzas, but that’s probably too generous. More like the Cliff Richard. Not truly bad, just very, very boring. 4/10
Pizza Hut
God, I used to love this place. The thick, bready crust, gleaming with oil; the lashings of cheap mozzarella; the carpet of cut-price pepperoni.
But these days, the pizza seems sullen and thuggish, sweating grease and dismay.
The first mouthful does seem good, offering a hefty blast of salt and fat. But after that the thrill wears off, and everything tastes the same.
That said, it would be fine after a night out. 4/10
Domino’s Pizza
The most popular takeaway pizza in the country. Like Pizza Hut, this was a student favourite of mine.
But it’s pretty mediocre stuff. The ingredients are so cheap, so mass-produced, and so overly sweet, salty and fatty that they carpet-bomb the palate into terrified submission.
It has a turgid, one-note monotony that brings an unwelcome meat sweat to the brow.
The first couple of bites are followed by immediate regret. This pizza squats in the belly for hours, like an angry vagrant demanding release.
Not the very worst, but a pizza I’d cross the street to avoid. 4/10
Papa Johns
It looks mean and wan and pasty, and tastes of barely edible depression.
While not exactly disgusting, it’s little more than a culinary cipher, something that looks like a pizza, smells like a pizza but is concocted from industrially baked disappointment.
The crust is stodgy, the cheese mean and the tomato sauce over-sweet. Avoid. 3/10
