Pizza Pilgrims: almost perfect

Best Pizza in Soho. Go now, beat the queues

I knew from the moment I got to Dean Street something was wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it. As I approached Pizza Pilgrims my sense of unease grew. I stopped and stared at the place - somewhere I had thought about so much during the day, longing for the clock to strike six while time crawled along. The place looked right - all shiny, green and new, with big windows that let you see their roaring pizza oven.

That's when it hit me. I could see in. Where was the queue? The braying mob of Instagrammers, bloggers and wannabe media types? I was here, where were my brethren? This is PIZZA PILGRIMS for god's sake. Heroes of the street food scene. With their first pizzeria. On DEAN STREET.

I probably shouldn't have shouted that in the middle of Dean Street, but I was disorientated. Luckily not so much I couldn't find the door.

I’ve always wanted to try their van, but I work in the wrong part of town. Whitecross does many wonderful foods, but Italian is not among them. So at 6.30 we arrived at their pokey little restaurant on Dean Street – right opposite the behemoth of Pizza Express.

We weren't exactly welcomed – there’s no queue so we were ushered inside and asked to sit opposite a sweltering wood-fired oven. There we sat awkwardly on stools and waited. It was a Hello! Magazine short of a GP’s waiting room. Some of us were offered drinks, others nothing.

But within five minutes we were told to go downstairs by a nurse. I mean waiter. So we stepped into the cool, tiled cellar. It’s twice the size you’d expect, somewhere between a wine cave and a new gastro pub loo. I was brought a pint of the only beer available (sadly just Moretti) and left to peruse the menu, printed on the ubiquitous landscape brown recycled paper. There’s quite a selection of pizzas. Nothing as complicated as the Crate Brewery menu, but equally as tempting. Short of listing everything (click here for the menu) they had a something for everyone (Margheritas, nduja, salami, truffle), as well as something for no one (here’s looking at you marinara). They also had what turned out to be the best damned panzanella I’ve ever tasted, the secret being seriously thick dough, so that the moisture from the tomato doesn't cause the bread to fall apart but become clumpy like over-cooked gnocchi. Now THAT’S a texture you want in a bread salad.

The panzanella, which we had assumed was a starter, arrived at the same time as the pizza. This was made doubly bonkers because Pizza Pilgrim suffers from small-table syndrome, an affliction that affects 9 in every 10 Soho restaurants. There was simply not enough room for two pizzas, a salad, four glasses and the condiments. Because the panzanella couldn't go cold, we ended up eating it after the pizzas. In such a carb fest though, it mattered less.

Best pizzas in Soho

My friend and I went for the artichoke, ricotta and smoked garlic oil and the truffle and portobello pizzas, splitting them between us. In their determinedly authentic style, the dough was soft so you could roll and fold and stuff it in your mouth with glee, and the toppings were delicious. I'm not really a fan of pizza bianco, because it often loses the sweetness a pizza needs, but the truffle really sang through on the mushroom pizza. Sadly, the other was less successful. The artichokes were a little dry, and probably could have done with being chopped a little smaller so they weren't like boulders on a flat landscape, and there wasn't a hint of smoke to the garlic oil. Smoke was, in fact, lacking in its entirety due to the fact that their pizza ovens are fuelled by gas. I'd rather see the traditional methods, in keeping with the rest of the restaurant. Smoke also does wonderful things to cheese and bread - they're missing a trick.

I've heard it said that bad pizza is still pizza (I assume it wasn't a marketing slogan). Anyone who's picked up a Tesco value pizza can testify that's not true. But it's true that at its worst, Pizza Pilgrims do the best pizzas in London. Not the best bases (that goes to Chris Bianco at Union Jacks), not the cheapest (that's Franco Manca) and not in the best place (that's Crate), but if you want a purist's pizza, there's no where else you can go.

So where people are going I don't know. Take advantage of the lack of queues, it probably won't last.

   

Tonkotsu: my new stock answer

Best ramen in London.

I remember the first time I ever had a ramen. I'll whisper it: it was at Wagamama. I remember too many noodles, too many veggies that looked like noodles and a weird pink and white thing that looked straight out of a Woolworth's pic'n'mix. Apparently is was a crab stick. Anyway, it was all drowned in "stock".

Stock? I mused. As in, what OXO turns into cubes? But that's just a poor man's soup! So I carried on thinking that and, bar a terrible meal at the much-lauded Koya, barely sniffed at a ramen. Until I arranged to have dinner with a fellow food blogger. Both sick of burgers and lost in the middle of Soho, we started throwing Japaneses around (not the people that is, restaurants). And so it was that I headed for a rare ramen, and not entirely looking forward to it.

It all started going right before I'd even walked through the door. Rather than forcing you to look the diners, Tonkotsu have put their kitchens in the front window. Through it you see the Japanese chefs toiling away over massive, shiny pots of stock, chopping veg, frying gyoza and talking excitedly. It's so inviting and theatrical, like the very best street food.

It quickly becomes clear why they've done this. The dining room is so thin there's hardly room to swing a cat, which I believe neither the Japanese nor the Chinese would want to do anyway. So you walk past the kitchens into a dingy, atmospheric corridor, where your table just happens to be. The effect is that you immediately feel a million miles from Soho. It's not authentic by any stretch, and I hate that word anyway, but it has an edge that makes you think you're in some kitch cafe in Shoreditch, not least because you can see the wiring.

Service was swift (there are only about 30 seats so it should be) and within about 10 minutes we were supping on yuzu lemonade and digging into a crispy-bottomed moon-shaped prawn gyoza (dumplings to most people). The were the delicious, fresh as spring and sweet with the light, not overly spicy (though slightly watery) chilli sauce. Before we had even finished five (and believe me it didn't take long) our ramen had arrived. And it looked like no ramen I had ever seen.

Unlike Koya's cloudy, separated mix of oil and chicken water, this was dark, thick and slightly viscuous, like Soda Stream coke syrup. And it was stuffed with flavour; absolutely loaded with it, from pork bones that must have been cooked for weeks to get all this beautiful flavour out. The soy sauce added a cheeky sweet-saltiness that made it as moreish as crack. It left oil on your lips and hope in your heart and once paired with the falling-apart pork, marinated in mirin and soy until it fell apart, it was all I could do not to throw my face straight in it. And then the egg! Imbued with the flavours of the stock it was a revelation; the semi-runny yolk like a flavoursome jewel - the most precious thing ever held between chopsticks. Once I work out how they cooked it, got the flavours so deep, I will never eat another kind of egg again.

I've heard it said that £9 for a ramen is a bit much, I'd say that the gyoza were the only overpriced item here, at a pound each. But genuinely, this is the best fast food and so-called "cheap eat" I've had in central London and, when it comes to ramen, it's the only place you can go. Tonkotsu is as close as stock could ever get to art. No longer a poor man's soup, it's my favourite soup.