Oxted, Pizza Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “Always fresh sourdough pizza” has helped build a strong local following for this hip southeast London group, with outlets in Crystal Palace, Nunhead, West Norwood, Herne Hill and Elephant & Castle. A new natural wine selection from specialist importer Les Caves de Pyrène is now available alongside the craft beers on tap. Top Tip – “make sure you leave room for the ice cream”.

2023 Review: “Always fresh sourdough pizza” has helped build a strong local following for this hip southeast London group, with outlets in Crystal Palace, Nunhead, West Norwood, Herne Hill and Elephant & Castle. A new natural wine selection from specialist importer Les Caves de Pyrène is now available alongside the craft beers on tap. Top Tip – “make sure you leave room for the ice cream”.

This Streatham fixture punches way above its weight, having drawn pizza-hounds from across London for more than a decade. Neapolitan-born co-founder Andrea Asciuti is also behind Peckham Rye’s 081 Pizzeria.

Diminishing feedback in recent years makes it hard to recommend this “noisy and fun”, family-run Sardinian on Brockley Rise quite as resoundingly as we used to. Fans, though, still say it’s “a super, local Italian trattoria, with a great menu: especially the quirky ice cream and sorbet flavours”.

There’s “a lot to like and not much to dislike” at this duo of “basic neighbourhood Italians” in South Ken and Dulwich Village – even harsher critics (who say the food is “generic” or “just about passable”) find them “pleasant”; and they’re often “full of families” because the “excellent staff make kids very welcome”.

2023 Review: “Tasty thin-crust dough – cooked well in the middle, so no soggy bottoms” – is the secret to the appeal of this seven-strong South London sourdough pizzeria group, where the emphasis is on local ingredients (including Shipton Mill flour and British-made buffalo mozzarella) washed down with locally brewed craft beers and juices from Kent.

2022 Review: “Great pizza in a cycle-themed restaurant”, alongside high-energy breakfast and brunch, washed down by decent coffee, fuel the peloton that passes through Putney on the way to and from Richmond Park – “what’s not to like?”. The branch in Balham closed down in 2020.

“Great pizza that’s very good value” is the USP of this Neapolitan-style shopfront outfit by Brockwell Park. It used to have three offshoots across South London, but now only the Herne Hill branch is ongoing.

2023 Review: “Always fresh sourdough pizza” has helped build a strong local following for this hip southeast London group, with outlets in Crystal Palace, Nunhead, West Norwood, Herne Hill and Elephant & Castle. A new natural wine selection from specialist importer Les Caves de Pyrène is now available alongside the craft beers on tap. Top Tip – “make sure you leave room for the ice cream”.

“Reliably excellent pizza” – “better than the other high street chains” – is what you’ll find at this growing Clapton-based operation, now with 12 sites from Balham and Crystal Palace in the south to Tufnell Park (which, as of summer 2024, is the latest to open). They’re perhaps “not smart as places to eat”, but that hardly matters – and the “toppings are interesting without being off-puttingly un-pizza-ish”.

2021 Review: “Amazing pizzas” are a culinary highlight on the sizeable menu (moules, salads, pasta…) at this early-wave microbrewery in Blackheath which celebrated its 20th year in 2020, and where you can also sample, of course, a wide variety of brews fermented in the adjoining stainless steel tanks. Over the years it’s spawned spin-offs in Cardiff, Reading and Bristol.

2023 Review: “Always fresh sourdough pizza” has helped build a strong local following for this hip southeast London group, with outlets in Crystal Palace, Nunhead, West Norwood, Herne Hill and Elephant & Castle. A new natural wine selection from specialist importer Les Caves de Pyrène is now available alongside the craft beers on tap. Top Tip – “make sure you leave room for the ice cream”.

2021 Review: These “buzzing family-run Italians” in southwest London create “an exceptional atmosphere” for large parties of all ages – and “they won’t break the bank”. “Despite the celebratory brouhaha, they produce a very respectable menu of traditional dishes – fish stew, duck, pizza on demand” – “even the veggies are catered for”. “Expect noise and old people dancing.”

This seven-year-old independent a couple of doors along from Chez Bruce on the edge of Wandsworth Common is reckoned by fans to offer among the “best pizza in town”. “I only discovered it recently but it has become a favourite”.

2023 Review: “Tasty thin-crust dough – cooked well in the middle, so no soggy bottoms” – is the secret to the appeal of this seven-strong South London sourdough pizzeria group, where the emphasis is on local ingredients (including Shipton Mill flour and British-made buffalo mozzarella) washed down with locally brewed craft beers and juices from Kent.

2023 Review: “Deliciously different pizza” comes by the slice in the “relaxed setting” of this yearling in a former grain warehouse (a former site of Forza Win). For all its “very basic” appearance, serious thought goes into the toppings, along with ingredients such as Sicilian datterini tomatoes, Calabrian tropea onions and Turkish figs. “The only problem is knowing when to stop ordering!”

Peckish for pizza down Peckham way? Andrea Asciuti’s popular pitstop is a pint-sized, 20-cover premises (a lot of the business is for delivery) and punches well above its weight, with a superb selection of funky Neapolitan pizzas (from 72-hour fermented dough), panuozzo (Neapolitan street-food sarnies), tapas (e.g. arancina, deep fried aubergine balls, lobster croquettes) and puds (including Nutella pizza, natch).

“Top-notch pizzas” that are chewy, light and charred at the requisite 500 degrees have won a loyal following for this Neapolitan pie joint, which started life as a food truck at Redhill Market in 2017 and gained this standalone restaurant two years later. While brothers Luca & Paolo Malavasi, who run it, recently ended their collaboration with Pilgrim Brewery at the Hatch (the latter is transitioning to its own food offering), their mini-empire still includes a much bigger, 85-cover sibling in Horsham – and, in November 2024, they were due to open a third branch in Farnham, Surrey, one building over from Reel Cinema.

2023 Review: “Tasty thin-crust dough – cooked well in the middle, so no soggy bottoms” – is the secret to the appeal of this seven-strong South London sourdough pizzeria group, where the emphasis is on local ingredients (including Shipton Mill flour and British-made buffalo mozzarella) washed down with locally brewed craft beers and juices from Kent.

“Reliably excellent pizza” – “better than the other high street chains” – is what you’ll find at this growing Clapton-based operation, now with 12 sites from Balham and Crystal Palace in the south to Tufnell Park (which, as of summer 2024, is the latest to open). They’re perhaps “not smart as places to eat”, but that hardly matters – and the “toppings are interesting without being off-puttingly un-pizza-ish”.