These days it’s easy to pick out the Italian expats on Stoke Newington Church St. They’re the ones picking their jaws up from the pavement after having spotted the words DATTE FOCO – slang for “light yourself on fire” – spelled out in white letters on the shop window beside the Three Crowns pub. Datte Foco could be interpreted here in the baking or eating sense. But many Italians recognise it as a Roman way of telling a friend, good-naturedly, to go burn in hell.

A second double take is elicited by what lies just inside the window: pizza al taglia and pizza bianca romana so good they could be mistaken for treasures stolen from the Eternal City. Sure I am getting a bit overexcited: This is hardly the first place in Londinium to do either pizza al taglio – “cut” pizza usually sold by weight (see Maletti and Princi), nor is it the sole practitioner of authentic pizza bianca romana (see Spianata). Moreover, the dough is still evolving and the finished product, like all pizza rustica (as the by-the-slice format is known outside Rome) invariably suffers in the reheating. You’ll nonetheless forgive my giddiness once you’ve sunken your teeth into one of these crisp yet puffy rafts and explored its exceptional topography.

The pizzeria was opened by Stokey native Neil Belgrave (above left) and Herbie Leonelli (above right with slab of bianca), two friends who said “datte foco” to their City jobs in finance. Leonelli’s tale is especially poignant: His Anglophile parents travelled from Rome to London so he could be born here and then shipped him off to English boarding school at 13. (You can see him wince even now from the retelling). 20 years later he returned to Rome to apprentice as a pizzaiolo at Pizzeria Russo in the Prati district. His journey home is what’s known, in Rome and elsewhere, as la forza del destino – “the force of destiny.”

Pizza bianca romana ought not be confused with the tomato-less white pizzas seen on pizzeria menus all over. Brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and rosemary, the Roman version is more like focaccia than pizza. My colleague David Downie, author of the definitive Cooking the Roman Way and the indispensable Food Wine Rome guide, observes that it’s crispier and more porous than focaccia and likens it instead to “a leavened flatbread with a rough, uneven texture varying in thickness from 1/4 to 3/4 inches.” The thicker half of that description matches Leonelli’s pizza bianca londinese.

Datte Foco outfits its pizza al taglio in a wide assortment of good-quality toppings. Some combinations are baked nearly every day; others are specials. A couple of the former, like the pizza topped with potatoes cut to the size of frites, were meant to be one-offs but proved too popular. The Margherita is blanketed with decent fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella), yet it’s not as pleasing as the pizza rossa with only roma tomato sauce or anything with mushrooms and sausage. It’s a mouth feel thing. Melted mozza doesn’t always reheat all that well.

A great plus of pizza al taglio is that it allows you to sample several varieties at one. You are encouraged to do just that, to go light yourself on fire. Alternatively this might be more fun to do as a group: youngandfoodish.com will be launching a series of pizza Tuesdays, the first of which will take place on the 2nd of February at Datte Foco at 7:30pm. To learn more or book a place at the table,  click here.

Datte Foco: A Pizza & Love Joint – 10 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 (see map). Tel: 020 7254 6055