Second only to burgers in London's foodie circles, the competition to be the next great pizza provider continues with the arrival of Pizza Pilgrims in Soho. Two brothers Thom and James say they're aiming to bring Neapolitan pizzas to London.
"We are called Pizza Pilgrims because last summer we set off to bring our little 3-wheeled van back from the southernmost tip of Italy to the UK (at a top speed of 35mph!)," James told Hot Dinners. "On our five week journey back, we learned from producers, farmers and Italian mamas, in the ways of great Italian food and most importantly, Pizza. We put on two stone between us..."
The whole adventure was filmed and should be appearing on a food channel near you at some point this summer. And from 1 March the brothers and their van (complete with a 600kg oven in the back) will be operating out of Berwick Street market every weekday.
"Our menu is going to be very simple to begin with anyway," they told us. "We're really focusing on making the perfect Margherita. We'll also be doing marinara (no mozzarella), and a pizza with a spicy sausage from Calabria called Nduja. In the future we want to do pizza fritta, calzones and, dare I say it, sweet pizzas. But for now we're going to stick with the streetfood ethos of doing one thing really well."
"The other difference to our pizzas is that we'll be serving them "porta folio" which means "wallet in Italian. It's a technique of folding the pizza in Naples to make it mobile."
To keep tabs on what Pizza Pilgrims are up to, you can follow them on Twitter at twitter.com/pizzapilgrims
