Evening Standard
David Ellis nabbed a reservation directly from founder Carl McCluskey (“perks of the job and all that”) at this new pizzeria/pub in Mayfair, a follow-up to the original in Hammersmith that many critics (including Harden’s respondents) rate as London’s best pizza venue. Normal mortals, David suggested, have to endure a long queue or chase an online reservation that never quite materialises.
The pizzas are pretty well unchanged from the OG – “why mess with a formula that so evidently works?” – and come in a narrow choice of eight flavours, with a thin, crisp crust that is close to the New York style and dough blistered as in Naples.
As for the pub part of the equation, there’s a sign reading ‘Come for the pizza, stay for the Guinness’, betraying the involvement of Charlie Carroll and Oisín Rogers of The Devonshire, while the dining room’s bare brick walls and steakhouse-red leather banquettes evoke New York and is “actually rather gorgeous. It hums and crackles with a babbling crowd”.
All in all, then, “a beautiful room serving the same pizza that made it so big in Hammersmith… Is it worth queuing five hours for? I can’t answer.”
David Ellis - 2025-12-01Daily Mail
Tom Parker-Bowles was equally taken by the latest Poon’s, hailing it “a cracker… a new modern Chinese classic” that displays a lightness of touch “so often so absent in many British Chinese restaurants”.
‘Magic soup’, he said, lived up to its name and was “the most pure and gentle of broths, ‘to soothe, restore and nourish’. It has a mellow fruitfulness that makes you want to gulp it by the gallon.” Unlike Grace, he gave the cold roast-duck salad the thumbs-up as “light and lithe and lovely, with lots of crunch and bite, and a perfectly judged acidity”.
Tom also visited the new central London home of Crisp Pizza, having avoided the legendary Hammersmith original on the basis that a three-hour wait was “two hours and 55 minutes too long” for pizza.
He thoroughly approved of its new host venue, the Marlborough pub, freshly restored by the team behind the Devonshire. And did the pies live up to the hype? A resounding Yes: this was “exceptionally fine pizza, in the New York style but very much Crisp’s own creation. Meaning the base is crisp and crunchy, but never dry, the crust charred and splendidly brittle,” while the toppings were notable for “the sheer quality of the ingredients”.
Tom Parker Bowles - 2026-01-04
