Taunton, Pizza Restaurant Guide

Forget Napoli, forget NYC – for “fabulous pizzas” look no further than Ancoats, where you’ll find the “original branch and still hands-down the best” of the brand that has taken the UK by storm in recent years (2025 openings in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge and West Bridgford, Notts brought the total to 35 branches). Jim Morgan & Kate Wilson immortalised their dog Rudy when they launched here in 2015, joining Manchester’s Mission Mars stable a couple of years later to fund expansion. Top Menu Tip – don’t fill up on pizza because “the Kinder Bueno cheesecake is to die for (if there’s any left)”.

2022 Review: The former Deansgate branch of Zizzi – an elegant, Grade II-listed space with 8-metre high ceilings – is set in late 2021 to be home to what is often touted as ‘the world's best pizza’, as made famous by Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love. The city prides itself on knowing its way around a slice – it will be interesting to see how this newcomer stacks up.

2022 Review: Any new project involving Sam ‘Where the Light Gets In’ Buckley is news in these parts, and so it will likely be with this new community bakery, pottery and deli – a forthcoming collaboration with potter Joe Hartley and baker Rosie Wilkes. We are promised buns a-plenty, alongside pies, pizza, artisan pottery… and to cap it off, a sound system playing vinyl.

The second pizza project from couple Kate & Jim Morgan, whose previous venture, Rudy’s Pizza in Manchester, became such a runaway success that the duo sold it to hospitality giants Mission Mars in 2017 (albeit remaining on as stakeholders as it has spiralled into a nationwide chain). As per its famous predecessor, the order of the day is “perfect pizza” of Neapolitan bent, cooked for just sixty seconds to achieve a perfectly blistered crust – “but don’t skimp on the starters”, which might include arancini and deep-fried olives with house sausage.