The only agonising decision ticket-holders to make is choosing a champion from amongst these contenders:

GIUSEPPE by The Perfectionists’ Café
tomato, buffalo mozzarella, buffalo ricotta, ‘Nduja, confit tomatoes, Parmesan

AMERICAN PSYCHO by Wandercrust
tomato, mozzarella, Ventricina salami, Roquito peppers, chilli honey

SANT ORBINO by Santa Maria Pizzeria
tomato, smoked mozzarella, salamella piccante, burrata, tarallo crumbs

CONFIT LAMB by Hai Cenato
confit lamb neck, spiced aubergine, ras el hanout, mozzarella, yoghurt, mint

TRIBUTE by Mother
tomato sauce, Bigoncia prosciutto, Parmesan, Pecorino Romano, fresh basil, oregano, black pepper

PALOMA by ‘O ver
smoked mozzarella, chiodini mushrooms, pancetta arrotolata, black pepper, fresh basil

* Vegetarian alternatives will be available for all 6 of the pizzas above.

For more information about the 2018 London Pizza Festival, click here.

Testing out some new spring pizzas, the great Matteo Aloe applied a creamy white spread to some sourdough mini-pizzas already coated with a layer of tomato. What I speculated might be a whitefish pâté or a cannellini bean paste was in fact a blend of potato and lardo. It was one terrific new pizza topping and needs to go on the menu fast – and, sorry, not just for spring.

A good hour later Matteo served hunks of his sourdough bread to accompany glasses of the elegant sparkling Pignoletto from Orsi Vignette San Vito. I asked if I could have my slices of sourdough with a schmear of the potato lardo spread. A potato lardo bruschetta of sorts.

No probs. Pizzaiolo Alessandro Cenni even improved upon my suggestion, tossing diced pancetta over the spread (as if more pork fat were necessary). I tasted the bread and swooned with giddy pleasure. “The only thing that could improve this,” I said, picking myself up off the floor, “would be an egg yolk.”

And thus was born Radio Alice’s potato lardo sourdough bruschetta with pancetta & egg yolk.

Three new fast-casual restaurants bring pizza-by-the-slice to Charing Cross road in Central London.

Here are my early takes based on single visits to NY FOLD, Fornetto and Vico.

NY FOLD

The New Yorkese way to attack a triangular slice cut from a large pizza is to fold it lengthwise, pinching the two corners at the top. This is what’s meant by “NY FOLD”.

But when I, a native NYer with decades of hands-on experience, tried to bend one of NY FOLD’s triangles down the middle it cracked instead. One large segment broke off from a corner. #NYFAIL

The crust was strangely brittle, hence the embarrassing break, but hardly bad. What will keep me from going back to this sleekly styled but tragically named slice joint, presumably a fast-casual showcase for a chain-in-the-making, is the utter blandness of the basic £3.95 Margherita slice. The red sauce may have been robust and flavourful, as the menu promises, but who could tell? Talk about scant: It must’ve been applied to the surface of the stretched dough with a nose dropper. There was ample melty mozzarella to fill you up but it desperately needed something with salt, such as grated grated Pecorino Romano. Or salt.

If you do go to NY FOLD, out of convenience or curiosity, I’d recommend, (A), your ordering something jazzier with more toppings and, (B), attacking your slice with fork and knife.

103 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0DT

FORNETTO

Snug Fornetto operates much like any pizza al taglio shop in Rome. Rectangular slabs of pizza pre-baked in a shallow tray are lined up in a glass display case. You point to the pizza variety you want. Ordinarily the server proposes various sizes by moving his cutter forward or backward, like a cheesemonger. But here at Fornetto you pay by the fixed portion, not the weight – from £3 per slice.

I like the pizza, with its airy crust, and love its location near the National Portrait Gallery, between Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. I’ll be back, even if some toppings lack punch and panache.

The Margherita (above right) was seasoned with stealth basil. I asked if we were expected to tear off fresh leaves from the potted basil sitting on counter against the wall. The charming Italian woman in charge smiled. The basil plant was intended for decoration, she explained, but if I wanted to help myself no one would stop me.

21 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0ET21

VICO

With Vico the team behind Bocca di Lupa, an acclaimed Soho trattoria, and Gelupo, a cherished London gelateria, turn their attention to quick, ready-to-eat Italian food. They call it “street food”, adopting the lingo preferred by property redevelopers, and liken the soaring, whimsically designed indoor food hall to a piazza – without, needless to say, the danger of being hit by a passing Piaggio, pigeon or panhandler.

If you are approached by a stranger on the pavement outside it will likely be by someone handing you a coupon for a free slice of Roman-style pizza al taglio. I used mine for one topped with guanciale (cured pork cheek), Pecorino Romano and pumpkin purée. It was a Halloween Carbonara, with the seasonal substitution of orange pumpkin for yellow egg, and it worked.

The crust of Vico’s pizza al taglio – £3 price for a small, 100-gram serving –  has a pleasantly crisp, with the small air pockets in its interior crumb collapsing to pressure. It feels right.

If the goal is decent pizza with good, creative toppings in a clean, upbeat environment that does much more than just pizza then make no mistake: Vico is viable, scalable, enjoyable and Westfield-ready.

But there is little evidence of craft in preparation and pride in presentation. When you approach the counter to order at a pizza al taglio shop your decision should not be an easy one: You’re picking from pizzas on display, not on a menu, and each variety should look more unmissable than the next. You should feel like a kid at an ice cream shop, overcome with excitement and paralysed with indecision.

Vico will disappoint dreamers like me who admire chef-owner Jacob Kenedy and were hoping it would accomplish for London pizza what Gelupo did for its gelato. At Vico there’s no eye candy in the pizza display case. You make your choice almost by default. It’s destination pizza only if your destination is Cambridge Circus.

1 Cambridge Circus, London, WC2H 8PA

A-C-M-E spells doom.

To help catch his elusive prey Wile E. Coyote keeps putting his faith in the latest contraption manufactured by the Acme Corporation. The tactic invariably backfires, bringing only pain and humiliation to the hapless predator.

Miles Kirby, the head-chef and co-patron of the London restaurant and coffee roastery Caravan, blames these calamitous mishaps on the consumer, not the corporation. “It’s the user who doesn’t get it right,”  insists the New Zealand expat.

He would say that. His two restaurants don’t merely serve their house-roasted coffees in cups made by Acme. Caravan is the UK distributor of Acme & Co., their New Zealand manufacturer. Jeff Kennedy, Acme’s creator as well as the New Zealand coffee pioneer behind first Cafe L’Affaire and now PREFAB, both in Wellington, is a friend.

Give Kennedy his do. Rather than scapegoat fumble-fingered customers he designed durable coffee cups with them very much in mind. If the Coyote dropped a filled Acme coffee cup from the top of the Shard (surely an act of intent given the secure hold provided by the wide loop handles) it would miss the Road Runner by a hair, bounce back up from the Tooley Street pavement and plonk the attempted murderer on the noggin. The steamed milk and rich espresso flung high into the London sky would fall back into the upright and undamaged cup, forming a swirly, two-toned likeness of a beep-beeping Road Runner on its surface. If the bruised Coyote finally captured something it would be the World Latte Art Championship.

To baristas and coffee shopkeepers, the added practical appeal of the Acme coffee cups is in their volumetrics – geekspeak for sizing. Eschewing generic measures or guesswork Acme’s cup sizes correspond to specific coffee drinks (flat white, cappuccino, latte, etc). Form follows function.

Acme’s white-rimmed saucers are interchangeable: The 145mm saucer fits three cup sizes – 150ml, 170ml and 190ml. There’s no worry about matching the right cup to the right saucer, an impossible task in the early morning when you’re pre-coffee and your eyes are half-shut.

The heavy-duty cups make a fashion statement, too. Actually it’s more of an anti-fashion fashion statement, the new law of  averages, that is to say, of looking average to set oneself apart. The branding is discreet; the effect, normcore (“normal” + “hardcore”). The almost generic design is about sameness, anonymity, functionality, simplicity.

Sure, Acme cups are available in groovy, midcentury hues of green, red and blue that can be matched or mixed. But it’s the dullest colours – brown, black and grey – that are most sought by indie coffee shops.

Brooklyn Coffee is a new minimalist coffee bar in London’s Shoreditch whose very name announces its hipster intentions. Its Acme coffee cups are white on the inside and the lip, as they all are, and white on the outside surfaces, too.

Caffeinating a trend where the best decoration is none, Acme’s white-on-white espresso cup and saucer might be the purest expression of a style whose appeal is plain as plain can be.

The Acme name comes full circle.

Acme cups and sauces can be purchased in the UK from Caravan and in Canada from Eight Ounce Coffee.

When Alexis Gauthier  accepted my challenge to create a one-off burger for the January 27th BurgerMonday at Andrew’s Gray’s Inn greasy spoon I assumed he would reinvent, deconstruct, Frenchify or otherwise gastronomise the American classic. But the chef at Gauthier Soho, one of London’s highest rated restaurants, chose to preserve the simplicity and integrity of a good burger-joint burger made with bun, patty, melted cheese, lettuce, onion and pink sauce.

Alexis did, however, seek an extra dimension, a special effect to distinguish his BurgerMonday cheeseburger. First he housed each fully assembled burger in its own plastic bag to seal in its moisture and warmth. Then, just before the burgers were served, he blew smoke into their bags from a portable food smoker burning maple wood chips.

This smoky cheeseburger, itself a sandwich, was sandwiched on a three-course menu between two sandwiches. Many managed to get through dinner without touching their knives and forks.

For the starter Alexis squeezed a chopped Caesar salad between two Parmesan crisps.

He layered his burger with an aged Argentine Wagyu beef patty, a slice of Manchego cheese, lettuce, red onion and Sauce Choron, a tomato-tinted Béarnaise. He maple-smoked the ensemble in a plastic bag and sent it out with golden panisses (chickpea fries).

For dessert Alexis and his team filled éclairs on the spot with more praline cream and whipped cream than the choux pastry was meant to hold. Oddly no one of the 80 served an éclair complained about the cream spilling from all sides.

“This éclair is not made with tweezers,” said Alexis. “It’s a real one, the one you’re going to have at home for your birthday.”

As burgers go the absolutely sensational smoked cheeseburger-in-a-bag was a real one, too, the one you’re going to have at home for your birthday, but only if Alexis brings his Wagyu, plastic bags, hand-held smoker and good cheer to the party.
 

 

All photos by Ian Sargent. Click here to see all of Ian’s photos from BurgerMonday with Alexis Gauthier.

I assumed the white pizza box Elliot handed me contained a pizza, albeit a rather heavy one. But when I opened the lid I saw a chemistry set where the pizza ought to have been. Plastic containers containing various elements were slotted into the round openings in a square sheet of green cardboard.

I slid the box over to Elliot for an explanation of its contents. The printed text under the lid contained the step-by-step instructions (see their recipe) for the Pizza Pilgrims Neapolitan Frying Pan Pizza . I was to “bake” this at home with a nonstick frying pan, a hob (USA stove) and a grill (USA broiler).

The containers held all the ingredients I would need for two 20-25cm (roughly 9-inch) Margherita pizzas: two doughs, tomato sauce, fresh basil, Parmesan,  mozzarella, olive oil.

The next night I took down the nonstick frying pan and pizza paddle (peel) hanging from the kitchen wall of my London flat, preheated the grill, opened the beta version of this home pizza kit and got to work.

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The directions were clear, the ingredients superb and the procedure straightforward. It helped that I was accustomed to stretching out my own homemade pizza dough. In addition, if I didn’t have a pizza paddle to dust with flour and neatly transfer the flattened disks of dough from counter work surface to frying pan I’d likely have botched the manoeuvre.

Both my Pizza Pilgrims Frying Pan Pizzas were good. Very good. Truly amazing. Okay, the bottom of the crusts were much crisper than the soft, pliable ones I’ve sampled at Pizza Pilgrims and other Neapolitan-styled pizzerias (not that I minded) but that might have been my (un)doing. I fear I cooked the pizzas for too long over too low a flame.

Oddly, in a couple of ways my two Pizza Pilgrims Frying Pan Margheritas were even superior to the Margheritas I’d tasted direct from Pizza Pilgrims pizza oven the prior night. As widely acclaimed a pizzeria as Pizza Pilgrims is its pizzaioli do not always manage to connect the white dots of fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella) scattered over the surface. They either don’t get or don’t stay melty enough. Also, the pizzas are not always piping hot.

On pizza I prefer mozzarella in a molten state that runs into the tomato sauce. The two commingle and the red and white surface of the Margherita goes pink. With Pizza Pilgrims home version the only thing stopping the steaming-hot fior di latte from flowing off the top of pizza and into the living room was the crust’s puffed rim.
 

You don’t beat Josh Ozersky, the New Yorker who wrote the book on The Hamburger, at his own game. So when Richard Turner invited Fred Smith and I to compete against Josh in a NYLon Burger-Off at the Meatopia UK Meat Festival in September we agreed the only way to go was British.
 

British Beef

One advantage of British grass-fed beef over American grain-fed is the distinctive flavour of each cut. Rather than blend two or more cuts into our patties and blur some of what makes each different Fred and I had a thought: If you could have a single malt Scotch, a single origin coffee or a single varietal Champagne why not a single cut burger?

Fred set up a blind tasting at Byron, where he is Head of Food. We tried four patties each made from a different cut of the finest dry-aged Scottish beef from the London meat merchants Turner & George. The revelation was just how different the flavour of each patty was. The single cut patties preserved the individual character of their respective cuts. Each was a singular sensation.

British Cheese & British Sauce

Fred created a homemade 100% British burger cheese that would melt like American plastic burger cheese but taste like classic Welsh rarebit, the umami-rich cheese sauce traditionally poured over toast. The burger sauce was effectively in his cheese.

British Bun

From Flourish Craft Bakery we found a lovely English muffin with wonderful “squeeze” yet enough oomph to stand up to the beefy juices and cheesy ooze.

British Win

At the NYLon burger-off #TheSingleCut killed in two ways: It killed Josh, whose forceful first bite of our British burger spurt fatty juices into the crowd and drew a chorus of gasps, and it killed those tortured carnivores who followed the action but didn’t get so much as a nibble. Not wanting this to be remembered as one big tease we vowed to bring back the #SingleCut for a single night before the end of the year.

That night is BurgerMonday the 2nd of December.

photos by Paul Winch-Furness