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[title]There’s an old Italian story about the guy who invented pizza. He put it on his menu and opened up his restaurant. A customer came in and ordered the world’s first ever pizza. ‘How was it?’ asked the pizza maker. ‘Good,’ said the customer. ‘Though I had a better one last week.’ Point being: everyone has a very personal view of pizza.
The Time Out x Deliveroo Pizza Prizefight was a brave attempt to settle this dispute (in London, at least) once and for all. In the second of four epic food battles, eight dough kings and queens went for it in the atmospheric surroundings of Hoxton’s Geffrye Museum and the company of 1,500 opinionated, hungry Londoners. With comedian Francesco de Carlo compereing, the pizza war was waged.
Photo: James Gifford Mead
Franco Manca brought ’nduja; l’Antica Pizzeria da Michele unexpectedly went cheesy; PINZA! turned up with truffles. Fourpure beers were drunk, tunes were danced to. More than 10,000 slices of pizza were devoured. Who was going to win? Santa Maria Pizzeria was a good shout with its rare-breed sausage and chilli pesto: nice touch, SMP! Firezza’s sweet peppers were… sweeeet! And Zia Lucia went wild (in both senses) with taleggio goat’s cheese and truffle honey.
For two rounds, Clapham’s Joe Public led the field with its unexpected, white-based Joe Shmo creation. But then…
…In admirable comeback style, Made of Dough stormed home with its sensational chorizo number, and was duly crowned the pizza don of London. So that’s that debate settled for good (obviously not…).
Well done, Made of Dough! See you for a rematch…
Photo: James Gifford Mead