According to regulations set by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, a pizza must be soft, elastic and easy to manipulate and fold to be authentic. The cheese, either mozzarella di bufala or fior di latte (cow’s milk mozza), should appear in evenly spaced patches.

Although I revere Naples as the birthplace of the tricolored Margherita – red tomatoes, white mozzarella, green basil – and the enduring epizzenter of pizza, these rules weren’t meant to govern my picks for the top 10 Margherita pizzas in London. A charred, chewy, puffed-up cornicione is the cornerstone framing every great pizza, but who’s to say the disk can’t be crisp all the way to the centre point? And why shouldn’t the soft, sensuously milky cheeses of Caserta and Salerno be floated more densely over the tomato sauce to blanket the pizza with a thin but contiguous layer of molten mozzarella?

My top 10 is nevertheless Naples-centric. For the moment, London would rather emulate and import the Neapolitans than develop its own style. That may, however, soon change. Londoners have proved impressionable for the compressionable crusts at fashionable Pizza East. And the ultra-crisp, wafer-thin pizza platforms at Story Deli constitute a truly OILy – “Only In London” – pizza experience.

Finally, slow food is a good thing, especially when it comes to pizza dough. The best are prepared with a very small amount of yeast and take from 12 to 24 hours to rise. What I cannot tolerate is slow eating of pizza. It must be consumed hot. And because pizza is best played as a team sport, youngandfoodish invites you to PizzaTuesday, a series of special group tastings at London’s best pizzerias. You don’t have to be a pizza obsessive attend a PizzaTuesday but you do risk becoming one if you do.

1. Pizza Metro Pizza

The Gambero Rosso guide to the pizzerias of Italy includes seven foreign addresses: two in Paris, two in New York and three in the Clapham-Battersea area. A single area of south London gets more pages than all of Venice or Trieste. Sadly, one of those eateries, A Fenestella, has closed, leaving the newly deprived Claphamites to choose between two authentic Neapolitans: the admirable Donna Margherita and the outstanding Pizza Metro Pizza. Every millimetre of Pizza Metro’s wall space is covered with Naples-themed movie posters, murals and kitsch when all you really want to see is a pizzaiolo pull his puffy-rimmed, lightly charred, gently crisp, metre-long masterpizzas from the wood oven. The tomato-painted ovals carry the requisite Neapolitan patchwork of fior di latte, only here the heat-blasted mozza has melted into glistening pools. The newer Pizza Metro in Notting hill uses gas to heat its oven, rather than wood, and quality suffers.

Pizza Metro Battersea, 64 Battersea Rise, Battersea, SW11 – 020 7228 3812
Pizza Metro Notting Hill, 147-149 Notting Hill Gate, 020 7727 8827

2. Santoré

Forget Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square: The essential London attraction for Italian tourists was Soho’s was Spaccanapoli, probably because its pizza’s puffy, chewy, smoky-flavoured cornicione was so similar to what they can get at home –  if home was in Spaccanapoli, the old quarter of  Naples. The eviction of that great pizzeria by the Crossrail construction project had devastated pizza lovers shedding tears into the melted mozzarella at Santoré, Spaccanapoli’s sibling restaurant in Clerkenwell.

The pizzas at Santoré were, if anything, improved by Spaccanapoli’s closing. Owner Mimmo Savarese Nicola, his best Spaccanapoli pizzaiolo to Santoré to shape the dough and work in ovens in the manner of the great Naples pizzeriaTrianon da Ciro.

Though the eminently foldable Margherita is undeniably Paolo and Nicola’s best pizza, the Siciliana, with cherry tomatoes and aubergines, in sensational: The slices are more pleasurably pliable and less soggy without the tomato sauce, while the cherry tomatoes explode with flavour, as cherry tomatoes are wont to do. 

59-61 Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell, EC1 – 020 7812 1488.

 

3. Franco Manca

Upon arriving for the first time at the original Franco Manca I asked a waitress to pinch me so I could be sure the organic artisan pizzeria beneath the Brixton Market arcades and its £4.80 Margherita were not a dream. She said I would have to queue like everyone else. I soon discovered, if there’s any reality pinching to be done it should be of the fluffy, chewy, char-spotted cornicione that frames its ethereal pizzas.

Conscientious sourcing is central to the laudable story line created by Franco Manca’s Giuseppe Mascoli, but he’s overreached in choosing domestic mozza from Somerset’s Alham Wood. This British cheese solidifies in fast-drying patches over the Margherita, marring the interplay with the sweet Ligurian tomatoes and the thin, limp sourdough platform. Even so, the pizzas at the new Franco Manca in Chiswick, like those beneath the Brixton arcades, are things of beauty. And we have Mascoli to thank for lifting the status of pizza in London from convenience food to art form.

Franco Manca Brixton, Unit 4, Market Row, Brixton, S9 – 020 7738 3021
Franco Manca Chiswick, 144 Chiswick High Street, Chiswick, W4 – 020 8747 4822

4. Datte Foco

No other London pizzeria of this “cut” – Roman-style pizza al taglia – turns out a hand-made dough with such give and take: It’s a joy to sink your teeth into these crisp yet puffy rafts and explore their exceptional topography. Pizzaiolo Herbie 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 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.”

Leonelli outfits his pizza al taglio in a wide assortment of good-quality toppings. The Margherita is blanketed with good fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella), yet it’s the pizza rossa with only roma tomato sauce that wows. A great plus of pizza al taglio is that it allows you to sample several varieties at one.

10 Stoke Newington Church St, N16, 020 7254 6055

5. Pizza East

Rather than merely emulate the Neapolitans, Australian chef Bernie Plaisted has looked to pizzerias in Sydney and Los Angeles for some crisp thinking. His Pizza East pizza is crisp to the core, unlike its soft-centered counterparts in Naples, yet extremely light, airy and delicately chewy. Evidence suggests that the charred, blistered and bubbly cornicione was inspired by the sourdough crust at Pizzeria Mozza in LA. It compresses exquisitely to the chew. The English difference entails dusting the dough with fine Maldon sea salt. It the pizza too salty? Maybe. Would I like them to use less salt? No. The Maldon almost becomes a flavour as much as a seasoning. I love it.

The mozzarella is Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP – the best that GBP can buy. Pizza East drains the cheese, as it must, only not excessively so. The scattered patches of cheese do melt and ooze some as the pizza bakes in the wood-and-gas-fired oven, but the transformation from solid state towards a liquid one does not turn the whole disk into one milky mess.

Pizza East Shoreditch, 56 Shoreditch High St, Shoreditch, E1 – 020 7729 1888
Pizza East Portobello,  310 Portobello Road, W10 – 020 8969 4500

6. Harrods

Judged apart from the theme-park cheesiness that engulfs it, the pizza at Harrods is arguably the best that money can buy. The food hall’s pizza bar employs the highest-grade Italian flour, tomatoes, fior di latte and baker. Salvatore, the primo pizzaiolo, may delight ringside spectators with his tosses and twirls, but it’s his more subtle finger work on the dough that actually matters. His Margherita is soft and airy yet sufficiently crisp throughout to support the contiguous surface layer of oozy mozzarella. Only the £15 price is hard to swallow.

Harrods Food Hall, 87-135 Brompton Road, SW1 – 020 7730 1234

7. Rossopomodoro

While Rossopomodoro’s rapid growth is surely hurting independent pizzerias, it’s hard to knock the Naples-based chain for Starbucksizing the business when its management is so fussy about authenticity. The dough is said to be prepared with water imported from Naples – no mere gimmick when each pizza possesses the puffy cornicione and melt-in-your mouth sensation of a one-off Neapolitan classic.I worry about two things: rushed preparation and the recent difficulty I had digesting a pizza.

Still, when Alfredo, the bespectacled pizzaiolo, is baking for the Chelsea “Red Tomato”, lifting each pizza in the oven for a last-second blast of crisping, Rossopomodoro is capable of true greatness.

Rossopomodoro Covent Garden, 50-52 Monmouth Street, WC2 – 020 7240 9095
Rossopomodoro Chelsea, 214 Fulham Road, SW10 –020 7352 7677
Rossopomodoro Notting Hill, 184A Kensington Park Road – 020 7229

8. Story Deli at Scooter Shop

Now in a new, more intimate location, Story Deli remains a showcase for London’s most remarkable and pound-per-gram, most pricey pizza. It is also the most satisfying to slice into, hence the cutting board and pizza wheel that accompany every serving. The rotating blade cuts through the bubbly ends of the flatbread disk more cleanly and easily than you expect. There is zero give, bend or compression to this pizza format; its only response to pressure is crunch. Cubes of mozzarella di bufala and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano are scattered over the pizza AFTER it has baked. The raw mozza retains its pristinely fresh taste and soft texture. Be forewarned: these organic pizzas aren’t filling and, at £13, they aren’t cheap. But the artistry is considerable and the quality of ingredients high.

64 Sclater St, E1 – 079 1819 7352

9. The Oak

Found on the cornicione of Notting Hill, The Oak is a Italian-leaning Mediterranean restaurant that looks like a corner gastropub, once you peel away the pavement punters, and behaves like a stylishly rustic pizzeria. The golden browns of the unvarnished woods are a natural match for slender pizza crusts generously charred to a delightful crisp in the wood-fired oven. The pizzaiolo, enshrined within his own columned canopy, distributes topnotch toppings over his firm but delicate disks. He plays the mozza fast and loose.

137 Westbourne Park Road, W2 – 020 7221 3355

10. Sartori

The authentic Neapolitan pizzas at Sartori are baked in wood-fired brick oven custom built by the great Neapolitan craftsmen of Strazzula Michele, the Stradivarius of pizza ovens. Unfortunately, that oven is located in the lower level of the restaurant and so most diners miss the action as Paolo, a pizzaiolo familiar to Londoners through his work at Santore and Spaccanapoli, slides out one steaming pie after another. Regardless, how great to have Paulo, his Strazzula Michele and his pizza in Leicester Square.

15-18 Great Newport Street, WC2, 020 7836 6308