The Best Pizza in London: Where the Neapolitan Boom Landed

For decades, pizza in London meant Pizza Express on the high street and Domino's on a Friday night. The interesting work was happening in Brixton, where Franco Manca opened in 2008 with a sourdough Neapolitan that locals queued for in the rain. Then, between 2017 and 2019, the Naples names started moving in, and the map shifted for good.

This is a walk through the modern Neapolitan map of London, plus one stop for pizza fritta, the fried cousin that Naples has been eating for two hundred years and that the city finally has a dedicated room for.

What counts as Neapolitan pizza in London right now?

The shorthand is simple. A wood-fired oven running close to 450 degrees Celsius. A 60 to 90 second bake. A dough that has fermented at least 24 hours, usually 48, made with soft Italian 00 flour (often Caputo, often shipped from Naples). A puffed, blistered cornicione that is dark in spots, almost charred, and a center soft enough that you fold the slice or eat it with a knife and fork. Toppings stay short: San Marzano tomato, fior di latte or buffalo mozzarella, basil, oil. The argument starts at the edges, not the middle.

London now has rooms that meet that standard at a level that would have been unthinkable in 2015. Most of them are run by people trained in Naples, or by London cooks who went to Naples to learn. A few hold the AVPN stamp (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana), the Naples body that certifies pizzerias outside Italy. Stamp or no stamp, the bake and the dough tell you what you need to know.

The pizzerias ranked

The Naples names that came to London

The two rooms that changed the conversation are within a mile of each other. Ciro Salvo is a third-generation Naples pizzaiolo and a fixture on the 50 Top Pizza list. His 50 Kalo opened on Trafalgar Square in 2019, and the room argues for itself: a dough hydration high enough that the cornicione looks like a balloon when it comes out, blistered dark, with a soft, almost custardy center. The Margherita is the reference order. The fried starters, especially the montanara, are the sleeper play.

L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele traces back to an 1870 shop on Via Cesare Sersale in Naples, the room with the two-pie menu (Margherita, Marinara) that tourists queue around the block for. The London outposts loosened the menu a little for British appetites but kept the kitchen lineage strict. The Baker Street room near Marylebone was the first London location, and it is the one to sit in if you want to see how a Da Michele dough behaves in a Marylebone basement.

The Soho location is the second London Da Michele and an interesting back-to-back tasting. Same kitchen lineage, same dough discipline, different room and different crowd. If you have the appetite for a two-stop afternoon, order the Marinara at both and pay attention to the crust char. Small differences in oven position and service speed show up fast on a two-ingredient pizza.

Rudy's Pizza Napoletana is the wild card on this list, because it did not come from Naples. It came from Manchester, where the group built a reputation for strict Neapolitan and low prices, then expanded south. The Soho room runs the same playbook: 60-second bake, short menu, a Margherita that costs less than most London cocktails. It is the spot to send a skeptical friend who thinks Neapolitan pizza has to be a luxury format.

The neighborhood rooms doing the quiet work

The Naples imports get the press. The neighborhood rooms get the regulars. Theo's in Camberwell is the longest-running cult favorite in south London. Theo Antoniou trained at Franco Manca in the Brixton years and then went his own way, with a softer, slightly chewier dough and a room that feels like a friend's kitchen. Order the Margherita and the 'Nduja, in that order.

Laboratorio Pizza in East Dulwich is the kind of room you get when two cooks who care about flour open a small place in a residential neighborhood. Long ferments, stoneground flours, a menu that rotates with what is good that week. The bake reads closer to a contemporary Neapolitan than a classical one, with a slightly drier crumb and a darker base.

Oi Vita Pizzeria in Highbury and Islington is family-run, with a wood oven you can sit a meter from if you grab the right table. The portions are generous in a way the Naples rooms are not, and the menu sticks to the traditional list (Margherita, Marinara, Diavola, Capricciosa). It is a Tuesday-night room.

Down in Streatham, Bravi Ragazzi earned a 50 Top Pizza mention on the strength of the dough alone. The room is small, the menu is short, and the crust has the kind of fermented sour-sweet smell that tells you the proofing time is real.

The early adopters

Sacro Cuore in Kensal Rise has been doing Neapolitan in west London since long before the boom. Wood oven, AVPN-style bake at 60 to 90 seconds, a menu that has barely changed because it did not need to. If you want a sense of where the London Neapolitan scene started before the Naples names arrived, this is the room.

Farina in Notting Hill runs Caputo flour direct from the mill and a longer menu than most. The room is neighborhood-Italian in the friendliest sense: tables close, kids welcome, the pizzaiolo waving from the oven. Order off the specials board.

DoppioZero takes its name from the 00 flour grade and treats the dough as the headline. The bake is precise, the cornicione is uniform, and the menu favors the classics over experimentation. A good place to bring someone who wants to understand what 00 flour actually does.

Figli del Vesuvio translates to children of Vesuvius, and the team behind it trained in Naples before opening in London. Classical menu, classical bake, no concessions to British palate. It is one of the rooms where you can taste the difference Italian water and Italian flour make, even thousands of kilometers from the volcano.

The fried pizza chapter

Naples invented pizza fritta in the postwar years, when wood ovens were scarce and frying oil was easier to come by. The dough is the same as round pizza, but it is filled (ricotta, smoked provola, pepper, sometimes ciccioli) and folded into a half-moon, then fried until the crust is golden and the inside is steaming. Until recently, Londoners had to fly to Naples to try it. A'Do'RE' changed that. The room is small, the menu is short, and the fritta comes out at the exact temperature it should: too hot to bite, perfect after two minutes. For a deeper dive into fritta and other Naples fry traditions, see our essay on Neapolitan pizza styles.

How we ranked this

We sorted these rooms by what people who actually came for the pizza thought, weighted by what is on the plate. A pizzaiolo's lineage, a 60-second bake, a real cornicione, a dough you can taste the ferment in. Length of line and napkin counts did not factor.

Written and last refreshed in April 2026.