Franco Manca

I've heard many, many things about Franco Manca. Many hail it as the best pizza in London, so off I went to sample it myself. There's a danger of the over-hype, and I was conscious of this - I was fully expecting to be completely blown away. Given that it's in Brixton and they only open from 12 - 5pm, it's not the easiest of places to visit, but I finally did.

After about 20 minutes of wandering around with Niamh and Kerri as none of us had printed maps or even noted down the address (oh, for an iPhone!), we settled down at a table outside, in the covered market area. It was cold - coats stayed on for the duration of the meal and my toes froze.The menu is small, and instantly I plumped for the anchovy, caper and olive pizza. It was disappointing that they didn't have the buffalo mozzarella that day but nevertheless, the pizza was indeed, delicious. It had a lovely crust, great flavour and was generous in the toppings. It was a decent size too, something I always look for in a pizza. A well dressed green salad accompanied it.

Home-made lemonade was delicious and tasted a bit like honey, but the white wine (at £7.50 a bottle) was pretty grim. I couldn't drink more than half a glass of it and not just because I was hungover - it was really acidic and tasted quite astringent.

Verdict? Really impressive pizzas, and extremely well priced considering it's all organic (the bill for 3 pizzas, 1 bottle of wine, 2 large bottles of lemonade and a side salad came to £31). I would definitely come again, but perhaps in the summer - I was seriously frozen by the time our meal was finished; get a table indoors if you can. The waiting staff could do with a prod too - we had to fetch our own glasses, fetch the waitress to get the bill, and then correct the waitress on said bill.

Check out Kerri's post here, and Josh over at Cooking the Books went the next day and also posted about it.

Franco Manca

4, Market Row

Electric Lane

Brixton

London, SW9 8LD