Sourdough bases and locally-sourced, seasonal ingredients are the order of the day at award-winning US chef Nancy Silverton’s foray into the London pizza scene with Pizzeria Mozza
The small strip of Regent Street which overshoots Oxford Circus on its way to becoming Portland Place is not usually known for its decent food offerings. There’s a branch of Leon, a Blank Street Coffee, and a healthy-eating outlet, Farmer J, but that’s it unless you want to splash out at The Langham hotel, home to Chez Roux by Michelin star chef Michel, and World’s 50 Best Bars winner, Artesian. At another hotel across the road, however, the hip, boutique Treehouse, they have their own lofty in-house restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza.
Somewhat confusingly, it’s not actually situated within the hotel itself, but occupies the site of a former Pizza Express, just next door. The pizza baton has been handed on to a name most Brits won’t be familiar with: Nancy Silverton, a Californian-born chef, baker, restaurateur and author who won the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Chef Award in 2014, the US equivalent of being recognised by Michelin. In America, she is largely hailed for her role in popularising sourdough – and other artisan breads – and helms several restaurants both there and internationally. Pizzeria Mozza is her first British outpost, and echoes the one she opened in Los Angeles in 2007.
Nancy Silverton
Some American vibes can be felt on entering, on a freezing November evening: in the vast, airy space there’s a subtle touch of New Mexican-style tiling around the pass, behind which looms a vast, wood-fired oven, and enough artsy, modish lighting, ocean blue-and-white striped banquettes, and sapphire velvet bar stools to hold their heads up high in an LA dining room. The scent that hits us on arrival is layered with garlic, freshly-baked bread and tomato, an enticing olfactory signal – my friend and I fervently hope, being both chilled to the bone from our fifteen-minute walk here and ravenously hungry after a couple of cocktails earlier – of the flavours to come.
The menu is ostensibly Italian-American but you won’t find much that’s unrecognisable to the British palate here, except for, maybe, ‘Nancy’s Chopped Salad’, which turns out to be a vast, vinegary pile of iceberg and radicchio lettuce, tumbled with red onion, strips of salami and provolone cheese, sliced cherry tomatoes and dressed with an oregano vinaigrette. It is abundant and delicious, and serves as a good foil for the chewy pizzas we also order – of which more later. But first, antipasti: again, few surprises, so we decide to share the meatballs al forno and the – seasonal – butternut squash bruschetta. Three plump, juicy, yielding balls of tender minced meat arrive in a small, still-sizzling skillet, topped with a slice of thick sourdough which has been drenched in herb butter. The bruschetta are three (again, slightly annoying odd numbers, you’ll notice, for a party of two but, look, somehow we made it work) dainty rounds of crisp, lightly grilled bread, on which repose fleshy, supple hunks of squash which have been enlivened by the addition of wilted bitter greens and crispy pancetta, all drizzled with brown butter.
Festive Brussel Sprouts Pizza
When it comes to mains, yes, you could go for a rib-eye steak, roasted salmon, or an oven-baked pasta dish, but pizza is why you’re here, so why bother even looking at the other part of the menu? Silverton’s skill is in creating a perfect base, composed of several different types of flour, which results in a chewy, airy, slightly crisp foundation for those locally-sourced toppings. The choice is decent, but not too wide-ranging; there’s even an approximation of a Hawaiian. Here it’s named Pizza Alla Benno, in homage to one of her children who is apparently mad about the combination, and featuring speck, fior de latte and jalapenos to lift what some pizza-lovers see as an absolute abomination. We swerve this one, however, and also bypass the recent festive addition to the menu, delicious as it actually sounds: the Brussel Sprout pizza, which combines braised sprouts with sweet red onion, guanciale, chilli flakes and pecorino Romano.
Instead, my mate goes for the simple but classic proscuitto di Parma, featuring silky slices of ham draped over a bright, fresh tomato sauce and camouflaged by piles of rucola, while I pick the ‘ndjua with braised leeks, fontina cheese and a runny egg on an unadvertised white base – usually not my favourite, but the cheese, spicy sausage and egg combo makes up for it. They’re very, very good, and my memories of eating pizzas in this spot’s former incarnation are utterly banished. We accompany the whole thing with a couple of glasses of good, robust Italian Cab Sauv, though there is an intriguing-sounding cocktail list we’ll save for next time. Despite not having a sweet tooth, I’m somehow talked into dessert, so we share a butterscotch budino, a moussey, Angel-Delight-like affair, and a giant profiterole stuffed with ice cream and covered in a rapidly-stiffening, crunchy caramel sauce. The amount of sugar involved in both seeps directly into my veins and possibly dissolves the exterior coating of my teeth; a little most definitely goes a long way. Coupled with friendly, attentive service and a buzzy yet laid-back vibe, Mozza is a decidedly welcome addition to London’s pizza canon – even if you hate ham and pineapple.
