But groundbreaking London pizza merchants like Franco Manca and Pizza Pilgrims may be convincing a new wave of pizza bakers and eaters that the dots are desirable.

“They’re becoming quite the fashion, aren’t they?” observed Nick Buckland of Yard Sale Pizza, a new pizzeria on Lower Clapton Road in the heart of hipster East London.

Yes there is a place for personal preferences, even amongst the cognoscenti in Naples. Some, like the great Enzo Coccia, want their pizza cheese to be stretchy and stringy. Others prefer their mozzarella smooth, flowing, oozy, molten. A few like it every which way but especially loose.

Stretchy, stringy mozzarella over Yard Sale Pizza’s Margherita

Runny, molten mozzarella over the Margherita pizza at Ruben’s Bakehouse

Connecting the dots

I’m learning otherwise. When I’ve posted photos of polka-dotted pizzas displeasing to me these were wrongly interpreted as endorsements. The offenders hit the “like” button. When I released the video I shot at Coccia’s Pizzaria La Notizia in Naples outlining what to look for in fior di latte on a cooked pizza few London influencers commented on it.
 

#NoPizzaPolkaDots

The mozzarella dot matrix is threatening London’s pizza landscape. It’s a strong force with influential backers and it’s spreading like pox. I can’t beat it alone.

I need your help.

Write to your MP. Write to your GP, if you think that might help. When you spot the dreaded dots on a London pizza snap a photo of it and share it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook with the name of the pizzeria and the hashtag #NoPizzaPolkaDots.

If you don’t have a smartphone or camera handy just write #NoPizzaPolkaDots on a napkin and leave it on the table. Remember, a new generation of oozy-mozzarella-loving pizza devotees is depending on us.

Kidfoodish likes his mozzarella stringy.

Neapolitans may sing the praises of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP but mostly they eat fior di latte – mozzarella made from cow’s milk – on their pizza.

Any ambivalence about fior di latte , as opposed to buffalo mozzarella, might have something to do with what happens to this essential pizza cheese is passed from or into the wrong hands. In the video above the great Enzo Coccia of Pizzaria La Notizia complains about low-quality fior di latte that gets dry and rubbery in the pizza oven.

But stringy mozzarella Enzo likes. Stringiness, he says, likely indicates that the fior di latte is of good quality, was cut by hand and won’t separate easily from the tomato or other other pizza toppings. And in that there is joy and beauty.

If you want to understand my desire for a molten mozzarella unfulfilled by some of London’s top-rated pizzerias, hurry to Saporitalia, opened two weeks ago on Portobello Road in Notting Hill, order a Margherita and see how the islets of fior di latte (cow’s milk mozza) melt into one another, keeping soft and fluid even minutes after the pizza has been pulled from the wood-fired oven.

If you want to know how good a pizza can be even without a magic carpet of oozy cheese, order the marinara instead and see what a lightly crisp platform more in the Sorrento mode than classic Neapolitan can do for a combination of toppings as basic as good Italian plum tomatoes, fresh garlic, olive oil and oregano.

And if you want to help me decide if Saporitalia‘s pizza is now the best in London, come join the brothers Valentino and Franco Ferro and me on May 22nd for a PizzaTuesday party at which we will try a variety of pizzas from the sure hands of Valentino, who years ago worked behind the forno at Pizza Metro in Battersea.

Myself, I may not be able to wait until the 22nd.

Saporitalia, 222 Portobello Road, London W11 1LJ (see map)

Click here for more information about the PizzaTuesday party at Saporitalia.

And then there is the four-season practicality: All wellies are waterproof. Only mozzarella wellies are certified DOP buffalo milkproof, too.

As for the distinctively cheesy headwear and body protection worn by the mozzarella di bufala men, these constitute yet another opportunity the farsighted fashionistas have failed to milk for all its worth.