“The best pizza outside Italy” – using “amazing” Neapolitan sourdough bases – again wins raves for this teeny and “stupidly cheap” Brixton Market pizzeria, and its Chiswick offshoot (“a big hit with local yummy mummies”) is almost as good; expansion to Covent Garden, Brick Lane and Westfield coming soon – can quality survive?
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“[B]efore 1945”, the critic tells us, “pizza was a dish largely unknown outside Naples or beyond Italian-American immigrant communities. Only after the war did it spread thoughout Italy and the world: from Pizza Hut’s first joint opening in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, the dish was but a scooter delivery ride away from becoming one of the pillars of modern nutrition.” Would almost make it worth buying the Evening Standard, wouldn’t it?
Tracey MacLeod (9th March 2009)
The critic visits a Brixton spot which “serves the best pizza in Britain”. Franco Manca's pizzas – as the review explains in some detail – “are the product of an obsession”.
Marina O'Loughlin (8th May 2008)
4/5 stars
“Enter Giuseppe Mascoli, expat Neapolitan and pizza lover (also club owner and indie publication proprietor), determined to bring the real deal to London. The effort he has undertaken to achieve this, while keeping a gimlet eye on organic provenance and artisan production, is little short of dizzying. Given that his chosen outlet is a no-frills, rickety joint seating only a handful of pizza lovers in the funky confines of trotter-and-yam-tastic Brixton Market, it's clear that this genuinely is that most overused of descriptions – a labour of love.” Quite a rave, then, for the place which may well offer “the best pizza outside of Naples”.
Charmaine Mok (17th April 2008)
4/6 stars
“Well-sourced, quality ingredients (many organic), top-notch equipment and good, chummy service” are all part of the formula which makes a “real gem” or this “tiny, very modest restaurant”, on the former Brixton site of Eco, and before that of Pizzeria Franco. There is also a “formidable, almost monstrous-looking wood-burning brick oven looming from behind the counter” - “an authentic Forno Napoletano shipped here by the new owners from an artisan producer in Naples”.
In Brixton market, Franco Manca opens only at lunch. To say that this is serious pizza is an understatement. The wood-fired pizza oven was built by a specialist supplier in Naples and shipped over (apparently the only one in England); it reaches 500C, meaning that the pizza is cooked in two minutes flat. The base is sourdough, slow risen for at least 20 hours. Toppings are also well-sourced e.g. the chorizo is from Brindisa, organic tomatoes from Liguria in Italy, and the menu proudly lists the other suppliers.
Andrew Neather (4th March 2010)
Tracey MacLeod (9th March 2009)
Marina O'Loughlin (8th May 2008)
Charmaine Mok (17th April 2008)
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