Pizza Pickup – a pared-back little box of a restaurant on the foodie strip of shops that line the north end of Peckham Rye – is an assuming spot. Its look, with a wall of bare bricks, some faux-retro Italian city posters (Firenze! Roma! And so on) and fake-marble-topped tables is far from hip. Menus are roughly printed. The pies are thin and crisp – no blistering Neapolitan cornicione here – and the toppings basic. It may have started as a street-food van, but artisanal and high concept this is not. The ciao? Fine. No more than that, but certainly passable if you’d rather avoid the 15-minute schlep west to Franco Manca in Dulwich or east to Four Hundred Rabbits in Nunhead.
A focaccia was nothing of the sort. Rather, it was a salted, plain pizza base. Soaked in grassy olive oil it was not. Both the tomatoes and mozzarella in a caprese salad were fridge cold and drizzled with a sweet balsamic syrup. Pizzas were tomato heavy and cheese light, though the meaty toppings on ours – cotto ham and prosciutto – were generous. Tiramisu was a tad cakey and needed more booze. Pizza Pickup is almost retro in its lack of ambition – plus, the most expensive bottle on the wine list is a fizzy red lambrusco, which even they admit is a non-ironic nod to the 80s – which in 2017 is pretty novel in itself.