Quartieri is in Kilburn, but it smacks of Shoreditch. The team behind the joint have gone full-on London hipster with this décor: trendy exposed brick and artfully arranged hanging plants. On a Tuesday night visit the place was beautifully lit, buzzing and packed with people under 30. In a word: fun.
Aesthetics aside, what makes this joint stand out is that it’s doing wonderfully daring things with pizza. Take the ‘arancia vesuvius’ – a traditional soft Neopolitan base topped with a rather untraditional mix of blue cheese and lemon and orange rinds. Pizza purists beware, this slice is divisive: I loved the contrast of the indulgently rich cheese and the wonderfully tart, sharp citrus; my date hated it. Less controversial was the ‘giallo del vesuvio’, a luxurious concoction of smoked cheese and thin-cut slices of Italian cured pork.
The only problem was the service. I waited an hour for my pizza and catching a waiter’s eye to complain took almost as long. Many free drinks were poured to make up for it, but you have to be very drunk to forget that kind of wait. Quartieri could be brilliant, though, so hopefully it’s just got teething problems.