The salumi, pizza and wine bar Lardo is a go-to restaurant with a go-to pizza. It brings a stylish but easygoing vibe I’d expect to find tucked away in my old home borough, Manhattan, to my new home borough, Hackney.

But I just can’t work up more excitement than that until one sticking point gets unstuck.

Much as I swooned over Lardo’s spinach, egg and lardo (cured white pork lard) pizza, its sensational take on a thin-crusted Fiorentina, I was deeply troubled by the egg yolk at its centre: It was set rather than runny.

Was this due to a busy kitchen’s miscue or is the Lardo egg set in stone? Hard to say. In a tweet my friend Libby Andrews of the food blog Ravenous confirmed the egg yolk on her Lardo pizza was also without ooze.  Might the chef be a hard-boiled craftsman who prefers the solidity of dry yolk over one that would break at the slightest provocation, spilling eggy yellow and defiling those sensuous ribbons of iridescent white lardo? Or could he be – and I don’t use this term lightly – ovophobic?

Next time I’ll insist my Lardo pizza has a yolk I can poke. I’ll let you know if I end up with a yellow pool on my pizza or egg on my face. Lardo, 197 – 205 Richmond Rd, London E8 3NJ (map)