By Sam Peters, CNN. Photographs by Toby Hancock, CNN.
(CNN) — Ask Gerry del Guercio and Paul Delany what they thought of New York’s pizza and the response is emphatic: “Underwhelmed.”
While New York’s slices may have a global reputation as some of the world’s best, they pale in comparison to what’s on offer in their home city, say these two pizza obsessives. London is now serving the greatest pizza in the world, they claim.
“We never really found anything that we liked better than our favorites in London,” Delany said.
Del Guercio and Delany run “Bite Twice,” a popular food review series on Instagram and TikTok and have reviewed around 600 pizzas in the UK capital, a mission that inspired them to open their own pizza restaurant, Carmela’s.
It’s also taken them to the heart of an emergent new slice — the “London pizza.” This variation on the classic dish has grown popular in the city over the past few years, ushering in a wave of new restaurants.
London pizza has yet to make it to the list of destination-linked classics — Neapolitan, Roman, Sicilian, Chicago, New York and New Haven among them. But those involved in the scene insist it should be, even if it’s hard to define.
According to Del Guercio and Delany, London pizza tends to take the high-quality ingredients of Neapolitan, the visual appeal and size of New York, the dark char and long cook of New Haven and Roman-style, and experimental doughs.
London pizza has “a lot of these styles, but with no rules,” Del Guercio said. “It’s a philosophy, bro,” Delany joked.
Del Guercio and Delany claim to have coined the “London pizza” term themselves, but UK food journalist and author Clare Finney first wrote about the concept in a 2019 article.
“The joy of it, and the beauty of it, is that it’s hard to define,” Finney told CNN.
London pizza has become a “a real celebration of the many different and distinct communities that make London what it is,” she said.
Despite Del Guercio and Delany’s apathy toward New York’s slices, the pair said that Carmela’s pizzas are inspired by what they found on the East Coast of the US.
“We’ve been to every major pizza city to try it all, and we’ve taken ideas from every single one of them to create Carmela’s,’ Del Guercio said. “That’s what every other London style pizzeria has done.”
The slice is right
Sebastian Vince developed his version of London pizza during lockdown. Vince owns Breadstall, which began as a takeaway baking business in the leafy suburb of Clapham. When restrictions were lifted, he began serving his experimental slices and quickly recognized the new opportunity.
Using a precise mix of pre-fermented and fresh doughs, called a biga, his pizza is known for being simultaneously crispy and chewy, with an airy crust.
Renowned British food critic Jay Rayner described it as “almost the best pizza I’ve ever tried,” second only to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Tokyo.
What makes London pizza so interesting, Vince says, is that chefs “don’t have that tradition, and therefore dogma.” Instead, amateurs are allowed to exper