My Top 5 Pizzas in London

My family has always eaten a lot of pizza: when I was growing up in Oxford, our Friday night family outings usually took place at Pizza Express and even a decade later, the UK pizza scene hadn't moved on very far. Thankfully, though, London finally has some great pizzerias that serve authentic and delicious pizzas. Here are five of my favourites:

1. Pizza Pilgrims
Pizza Pilgrims started its life as a Piaggio Ape van kitted out with a pizza oven based at Berwick Street Market. Founders James and Thom Elliot took the van on a pizza pilgrimage through Italy to learn the secrets of the perfect Neapolitan pizza from the experts. They now have two bricks-and-mortar pizzerias in Soho (Dean Street and Kingly Street), and a pop-up in Peckham, and the van still roams its way around London. The pizzerias are fun and funky and usually have a soundtrack of great '90s tunes.

I am something of a pizza purist and unless there are some really tempting toppings, I almost always order a margherita, sometimes with buffalo mozzarella. If the ingredients are good quality, there is no need for fancy toppings, and the ingredients at Pizza Pilgrims are top notch. 

The base is thin and the crust is puffy: slightly chewy and very moreish. It's well worth upgrading your margherita (£6.50) with a generous portion of the delicious, creamy buffalo mozzarella for £2.50. The wines are well priced and they even have Prosecco on tap. NB: there are a few sides and puddings, but no non-pizza mains. Margherita: £6.50. My full review.

Pizza Pilgrims is located at 11 Dean Street, London, W1D 3RP, and 11 Kingly Street, London, W1B 5PW.

2. Caravan
The antipodean-run Caravan in King's Cross doesn't just do pizza, but it does pizza exceptionally well. The restaurant is based very close to my office so I usually go at lunchtimes and, in the absence of a weekday brunch menu, pizza is usually an easier choice than the tasty small and large plates that are also available.

The pizza menu changes from time to time and there is usually a pizza special, but I have rarely deviated from my usual margherita order (£9). The crust is puffy and crisp, and the tomato sauce is tangy and pairs perfectly with the creamy mozzarella. There is an extensive wine list, but I usually have one of the excellent single-origin filter coffees or for a special treat, the decadent salted caramel hot chocolate. My full review.

Caravan is located at 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA.

3. Franco Manca
Franco Manca has come a long way since its first location opened in Brixton in 2008. There are now 15 restaurants in its mini-empire, and to my great excitement, its 16th branch will be opening in my neighbourhood next week; I've been looking forward to Franco Manca's arrival on Bermondsey Street for over a year!

Franco Manca's pizzas are famous for their delicious sourdough bases, backed in a wood-burning brick oven. Although I sometimes don't finish my pizza crusts, Franco Manca's are so delicious that I've never been able to do so, no matter how full I am. 

The margherita pizza (AKA no. 2) is £5.90 and is my usual order. None of the other pizzas on the regular menu are really my thing, but I sometimes order one of the specials, such as the pizza with green beans, pine nuts and pesto pictured below. There are a few wines, beers and soft drinks on the menu too, but no non-pizza mains. The service is speedy and as they don't take bookings, you may sometimes need to queue. My mini-review.

Franco Manca has multiple London pizzerias. Find your local here.

4. Il Baretto (CLOSED)
Since I moved from Marylebone to Bermondsey, I don't make it to Il Baretto, an Italian restaurant in Blandford Street, as often as I used to. It has long been a family favourite, though, and we often go for birthdays and other celebratory meals. The restaurant is located in the basement and is dark, sleek and intimate (this also makes photography very challenging), and the staff are lovely.

The menu has a lot more to offer than pizza, but as we usually share large platters of Italian deliciousness to start, I don't feel as though I'm missing out on the non-pizza options when I inevitably order the pizza. 

At £13.50, the margherita is by far the most expensive pizza on this list, but it is worth it — especially if you are looking for a more elegant venue to indulge in your pizza whims. For £16, you can have the bufala, but it comes with fresh rather than cooked buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. I usually stick to the margherita, which a generous amount of delicious mozzarella. If you can make it as far as the puddings, they are well worth the indulgence! My full review.

Il Baretto is located at 43 Blandford Street, London, W1U 7HF. CLOSED

5. Pizza Union
The newest addition to my London pizza compendium is Pizza Union, whose second location opened up in King's Cross a few months ago. They serve Roman-style pizzas that are super-cheap, super-speedy and very tasty indeed. The margherita costs just £3.95 and has a thin base, tasty tomato sauce and decent mozzarella (not quite as good as some of the other pizzas on this list).

After ordering at the bar, you get a buzzer that vibrates when your pizza is ready — usually within about five or ten minutes. On Fridays, there are often big lunchtime queues, but the turnover is pretty swift. The restaurant is also beautifully decorated with its colourful tiling and industrial-chic neon lighting. My full review.

Pizza Union is located at 246–250 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JY, and 25 Sandy's Row, London, E1 7HW.

Summit Special: Everest Review

I first came across the 1996 Mount Everest disaster a few years ago when some of the details were used in the case-of-the-week in an episode of The Good Wife. Although the case itself fell into the background as the show focused on the difference between the UK and US legal systems — in particular, the UK libel laws that put the burden of proof on the defendant and not the plaintiff — I was intrigued.

Not intrigued enough to pick up a copy of Into Thin Air, journalist Jon Krakauer's controversial first-hand account of the catastrophic expedition until earlier this year, when I had heard that Baltasar Kormákur's movie, Everest, would soon be released. I didn't really get into Krakauer's book — maybe I didn't gel with his writing or maybe I was reading too quickly and, not being well-versed in climbing expeditions, found it hard to build a vivid picture of the mountain and the events that took place on it. Kormákur's film, which is visually striking and compelling, if emotionally manipulative, doesn't have these flaws, although it isn't perfect itself.

Everest tells the story of a severe snow storm on Mount Everest in May 1996, which devastated several climbing expeditions that were attempting to reach the summit. Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) is leading the Adventure Consultants expedition, leaving his heavily pregnant wife Jan (Keira Knightley) back in New Zealand. He and his team are guiding eight clients, each of whom has paid up to $65,000 for the chance to reach the summit of Everest. 

The group includes Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), who will be writing a profile for Outside magazine, American doctor Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) and postman Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), who took part in a previous Adventure Consultans Everest expedition but didn't reach the summit. While Rob worries about his wife, his base-camp manager Helen (Emily Watson) worries about the company's finances.

By 1996, commercial hiking expeditions to Everest have really taken off and when Rob's group arrive at base camp, it is hectic and crowded. Rob's old friend Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), who runs a rival company, Mountain Madness, is leading another expedition. 

Scott seems to think that Rob has 'stolen' Jon away, and he also implies that although his own clients are all serious climbers, Rob's group need a lot more of a helping hand to get to the top. Meanwhile, the volume of hiking traffic means that there are big queues for all the ropes and bridges on the training hikes.

The conditions are looking good, though, and just after midnight on 10 May, several groups, including Rob's and Scott's, begin their attempts for the summit. When the sun comes up, it's a beautiful day and spirits run high. 

Although bottlenecks arise at some of the more challenging parts of the journey, many of the climbers reached the summit, celebrating with that kind of exhausted, oxygen-deprived jubilation you can only get when you're literally on top of the world. Others struggle, however; Rob tries to encourage them to descend, but some people are so desperate to achieve their dream that they persuade their leader to allow them to continue. And then disaster strikes when a huge storm hits.

I won't go into any more detail about what happens, but suffice to say that not everyone makes it back down from the mountain. Kormákur's film has a good ensemble cast, with many of the actors putting on their best Kiwi accents (I wondered if the film should be called Uhvuhrust). None of the performances were truly outstanding, although Emily Watson and Robin Wright, in a small role as Beck Weathers' wife, were great as always.

Everest is a tale of survival, friendship and heroism, but it is also one of great hubris — it is hard for a non-climber to understand why so many people are willing to give up everything for the chance to spend a few moments on the summit of Everest. 

Maybe it's different when you don't know the ending, but I found myself being swept up in the emotional ebbs and flows of the story. And yes, I cried. Of course, the film is beautifully shot and the first half, at least, is a great advert for Himalayan climbing expeditions. I saw the film in 3D and although I would have liked to turn off the 3D effect in the 'hangin' round in New Zealand/Kathmandu scenes, it was particularly effective for the mountain scenes.

We can never fully know exactly what happened up there and who deserves praise and who — if anyone — deserves blame. There are eye-witness accounts and satellite phone call logs, of course, but they only tell part of the story. Human memory is always imperfect, particularly among those who are sleep-deprived and suffering from oxygen deprival and frostbite. The conditions at the time made identifying fellow climbers very challenging, and there were several cases of mistaken identity, which complicated matters further.

If you have seen Everest and are keen to know more, check out Storm Over Everest, a documentary by cinematographer David Breashears (who was on Everest at the time with the IMAX team), which
makes a nice companion piece to Into Thin Air and Everest.

Open House London 2015: St Pancras Renaissance and Chambers Apartments

I was away from London for most of this year's Open House London weekend, in which hundreds of London's famous, infamous and secret buildings open up to the general public. Naturally, big queues form for some of the most desirable locations on the list, including 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin) — a personal architectural favourite — and I only had a few hours on Sunday afternoon.

Instead, I decided to go on a tour that I could book and I picked a venue that I see from the outside almost every day — in fact, I can even see it from my desk at work: The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and St Pancras Chambers apartments. 

We met our guide in the hotel forecourt and learned a lot about the history of St Pancras station and the former Midland Grand Hotel, whose building is now occupied by the Renaissance Hotel and the apartments. It was a beautiful sunny day — perfect for a little Open House adventuring.

St Pancras station was built as the central hub for the Midland Railway, with the grand (some said too grand) Renaissance Hotel as its pièce de résistance. It isn't surprising that the neighbouring King's Cross station, home of the Great Northern Railway, developed something of an inferiority complex. 

King's Cross itself has smartened up considerably over the past few years, but St Pancras is still the more striking and elegant of the two. Although the Midland Grand Hotel, which opened in 1873, used to occupy the whole of the building, the Renaissance just takes up the first floor (with a separate, west wing that has further rooms); the upper floors are made up of offices and apartments.

First, our guide took us inside the Renaissance. I've been to the lovely Booking Office bar for cocktails a few times, but I have never explored the rest of the hotel. We walked over to the hotel's grand spiral staircase, which has been the setting for various TV shows and, most famously, for the music video for the Spice Girls song Wannabe. 

It hasn't changed much since then! I was more interested, however, in the beautiful hand-painted ceiling with its golden stars on a teal background. We didn't go upstairs but the view from the ground floor was still impressive.

Our next stop was to the apartments upstairs. Looking up at the ceiling from the ground floor, it is hard to ignore the influence of Islamic architecture — although the roof has a glass ceiling, the light streams through. The building is also designed so that the ceiling on each floor is a couple of feet lower than than that of the floor below. Naturally, the servants used to bunk down in any free space they could find on the top floor.



Our guide couldn't confirm the urban legend of the West Indies cricket team setting up nets in the long hallway on the fifth floor, but did tell us about some of the design constraints faced by owners and tenants in this listed building.

Finally, we visited one of the clock tower apartments on the fifth floor. We didn't get to go right up to the clock, but enjoyed looking at the period features (the wooden box that looks a bit like a wardrobe or a phone box used to house the clock's winding mechanism before it was automated).

The views through the windows out over King's Cross were pretty nice too.

Another tour group was right behind us, so we had to leave the apartment before I had the chance to take any more photos. It's such a beautiful space and you can even rent it out on Airbnb. I'm seriously tempted, even though I live in London. We filed back down the spiral staircase, stopping briefly to peep out at The Lovers (AKA Paul day's The Meeting Place) in the main hall of St Pancras station.

There are, of course, plenty of places worth visiting during Open House London, but I would definitely recommend the St Pancras tour. You do need to book early, though, as they sold out pretty quickly this year.

Five Specialty Coffee Shops To Visit in Copenhagen

With only three and a bit days in Copenhagen, I had to prepare my plan of coffee attack very carefully, especially as good coffee shops are quite scarce in the area in which I stayed — the central station end of Vesterbro. But I did manage to visit five different coffee bars and spotted a few more that looked promising.

Copenhagen Day 4: Shopping in Nørrebro, Strøget and Vesterbro

Monday was my last morning in Copenhagen and the sun was finally poking through the clouds. I decided to try to burn off some of the pastries by running along the waterfront, past the Little Mermaid (who had fewer visitors early in the morning) and back down along The Lakes.

Nørrebro and Nørreport

After checking out of my hotel, it was time to hit the shops. I made a beeline for the creative-cool neighbourhood of Nørrebro, just north of The Lakes. It was a pleasant, 30-minute walk from my hotel near the central station. My first port of call was Jægersborggade, a lovely street with many cafés, restaurants and independent shops. At no. 9 is Meyers Bageri, a superb bakery and patisserie. I picked up a kanelsnegle with molten chocolate poured liberally on top. Perhaps not the healthiest breakfast but it was supremely delicious.

Just across the road, at no. 10, is the original Coffee Collective location. There are a few tables inside, squeezed in between the brew bar and the roaster, and a couple on the pavement. I will be doing a separate Copenhagen coffee post, but suffice to say that my cortado (30 krone) was very good. I also picked up a bag of Guatemalan beans to take home (95 krone).

Other places I spotted on Jægersborggade included: Kaktus (no. 35), a shop selling cacti and beautiful pots; Vanishing Point (no. 45; pictured below), which sells a beautifully curated collection of hand-made accessories; Gågron (no. 48), which offers homewares that are beautiful and sustainable and/or environmentally friendly; Manfreds (no. 40), a lovely, cosy-looking neighbourhood eatery; and Grød (no. 50), a restaurant specialising in the eponymous porridge.

I walked back down Nørrebro's main drag, Nørrebrogade (they're very creative with the street names here), crossing over The Lakes to Nørreport. A small homewares and toy shop called Maduro (Frederiksborggade 39; pictured below) caught my eye; they had some really pretty ceramics, lighting and rugs. For lunch, I stopped by Torvehallerne (Frederiksborggade 21), which was fully open this time. I had a final smørrebrod lunch at Hallernes, selecting one smoked salmon and one potato and onion open sandwich, which cost 95 krone.

Strøget

Strøget (pronounced, appropriately enough, 'stroll') is one of Europe's longest pedestrianised areas, running for around 1km. Strøget itself has a lot of the department stores, big shops and chains. I revisited Hay (Østergade 61), which has so many beautiful homeware and lifestyle products. 

I also went back to Illums Bolighus (Amagertorv 10), but left empty-handed, partly because I had spent a lot of money on food, and partly because the Scandinavian aesthetic is such that it's hard to buy just the odd item — you really have to go for all or nothing.

I also discovered a few cool shops on Købmagergade, including: Plint (no. 50; first picture below), which sells kitchen goods and homewares in a range of cheery colours; Message (no. 46; chain) and Samsøe ø Samsøe (no. 44), both of which specialise in good-quality Scandi style (lots of good basics in neutral colours). 

NORR (Pilestræde 36) is a boutique that sells a large variety of clothing, locally produced jewellery and beauty products. There's a café/juice bar inside the store and there's also an outlet selling sale items across the street. A little further west is a lovely little design store called Stilleben (Niels Hemmingsens Gade 3; second picture below), which has nice jewellery and bags and a great collection of prints. I had hoped to visit CPH Made (Brolæggerstræde 6), a local designers collective, but it's closed on Mondays.

By this point, I was in need of another coffee, so I popped into Risteriet (Studiestræde 36), a café-roastery, which sells its own whole beans and assorted coffee-brewing kit. They don't do hand-brewed filter coffee so I had another cortado (30 krone), which was pretty good, although a little longer than I usually prefer.

Vesterbro

On Saturday, I discovered the delights of Værnedamsvej, a quiet street just off the main Vesterbo drag (Vesterbrogade), which has various cool cafés and shops. Dora (no. 6) has a well-curated collection of homewares, including some vintage crockery and blankets that need instructions. Just next door, Playtype (also no. 6) is a font-lover's paradise. They sell notebooks, prints, ceramics and more decorated with Danish fonts. I liked the marble-print notebooks, but they only had the letters F, A, U and X (for obvious reasons).

On the other side of Vesterbrogade, on Oehlenschlægersgade (no. 13), is Just Spotted, which sells locally inspired and/or designed prints at various sizes from postcard to poster. It's worth making the detour west along Vesterbrogade (no. 137) to Designer Zoo, a store and gallery space split over three levels, with a particular focus on glassware, ceramics and jewellery.

I walked back towards my hotel along Istedgade, another good destination if you're looking for independent clothing boutiques and design stores. Some of the shops that caught my eye included: ES-ES (no. 108-110),  Girlie Hurly (no. 99), Kyoto (no. 95), Rude (no. 112) and DANSK (no. 80, interiors; no. 64, kitchenware). 

This is my penultimate Copenhagen post — the last post will be a coffee guide — but I loved the city and I'm sure I will be back before too long.

Copenhagen Day 3: Louisiana and Christianshavn

The mediocre Copenhagen weather couldn't last. When I woke up on Sunday morning, it was rainy and windy, which was somewhat unfortunate as I had planned to take the train up the coast to a modern art museum and sculpture park famed for its beautiful, scenic views. But when you only have a few days in a city, the show must go on and I headed out in search of some coffee to spur me on.

 I forgot to check the Sunday opening hours for Kent Kaffe Laboratorium (CLOSED) in Nørreport and it was closed, so I nipped around the corner to my back-up: the Torvehallerne Market branch of Coffee Collective.

I should note that Coffee Collective was only a back-up because I had planned to go to its original branch in Nørrebro on Monday and was worried I might not get another chance to visit Kent. Torvehallerne is a gourmet food market, split over two, glass-walled halls, each of which contains dozens of food shops and eateries. Coffee Collective had a few different filter coffee options, but I went for a pourover with the Guatemalan coffee (38 krone), which was very good.

Louisiana is located in the town of Humlebaek, a 30-minute ride north of Copenhagen on the Øresund suburban train line. I think the journey costs about 90 krone each way but, without wishing to sound like a broken record, it is free with the Copenhagen Card. So too is entry to the museum, which costs 115 krone otherwise. 

The museum is a ten-minute walk from the train station, which is probably windy even on a sunny day, but the rain was really throwing it down and I was convinced my brolly wouldn't survive. I arrived just as the museum doors opened and was happy to escape into the dry.

As well as an impressive permanent collection (including works by Danish artist Asger Jorn, shown below), Louisiana usually has a couple of temporary exhibitions. When I visited, there was a fascinating exhibition on Africa, encompassing art, society, politics and health. 

I was less interested in the Lucien Freud exhibition (I'm not a fan of his work). The building is beautiful: huge glass walls looking out onto the sea, accented with wood and black metal. It looked a lot like the setting of Alex Garland's Ex Machina or a Michael Haneke film, in fact, which was a little eerie.

There is a sculpture trail in the museum gardens, but the rain was so bad that I only managed to sneak out for a couple of seconds before retreating inside. Eventually, though, after I had browsed the excellent gift shop, which sells stylish clothes and accessories as well as homewares and books, the rain subsided and I ventured outside. It was still extremely windy but I enjoyed the stark coastal views.

Back in the city, I warmed up with an Aeropress brew at Kent, which had finally opened. The coffee was great — they offer pretty much every hand-brew filter coffee method you can think of and a choice of two beans — and the café is decorated in a casual, homey style.

Refreshed, I hopped on the metro to Christianshavn and walked along the canal until I reached Papirøen ('paper island'), so named because they used to print newspapers here. The small island now hosts Copenhagen Street Food in a giant warehouse with dozens of food trucks and eateries. It's more on the scale of Smorgasburg than Maltby Street Market, and they even had a few vintage clothes and accessories stalls at the front. 

There wasn't much in the way of Danish street food, other than one lone smørrebrod vendor, so I went for fish and chips. I felt that I hadn't had enough fish during my time in Denmark, anyway, and 50 krone for two pieces of cod, chips and a salad was probably the most reasonably priced meal I had had since arriving. The market opens late morning and closes late at night. There are a few seats outside if the weather is nice and the indoor seating is full.

After lunch, I walked west through the neighbourhood of Christiania, an autonomous neighbourhood within Christianshavn. It's an interesting place to walk through, notable for its DIY houses, colourful street art and, of course, the infamous 'Pusher Street'.

Christianshavn felt even fancier and, perhaps stuffier, when I left Christiania. I headed for Vor Frelsers Kirke ('the Church of Our Saviour'), which has a beautiful, helter skelter spire that you can climb to the top. It costs 35 krone to go up the tower (free with a Copenhagen Card) and it is a pretty steep and often narrow climb. It's worth it, though, when you are standing at the top on a step that's only 30 cm wide looking out over the city. Possibly one to avoid if you have vertigo — or a weak stomach.

I walked back to my hotel via the Cirkelbroen ('circle bridge') and then rested my aching feet before heading out for dinner in the meat-packing district.

There are a dozen or so restaurants and bars in the former warehouses just off Halmtorvet in Vesterbro. I had my eye on Nose2Tail, but it's closed on Sundays, so instead ended up at Kødbyens Fiskebar, a Michelin-listed restaurant in an old fish factory. If you want a table, you usually need to book, but I managed to score a seat at the bar. 

I ordered a Flemming Collins (105 krone) — gin, buckthorn, lime and licorice — and almost didn't recognise it when it arrived, orange and spotty. It was delicious, though, and went well with the cod (265 krone) I ordered for my main course. The cod was beautifully cooked and came with tarragon potatoes (they looked like green olives from a distance) and vegetables. It was an expensive meal, but the food was excellent and the atmosphere was great even on a rainy Sunday night.

My final destination of the day was Lidkoeb, the Vesterbro cocktail joint I had had my eye on all weekend. Located inside a courtyard off Vesterbrogade, Lidkoeb is spread over three floors of the building, as well as a fairy-light-accented patio. The indoor space is the definition of hygge: comfy leather booths with reindeer pelts for extra warmth and a long, low-lit wooden bar. 

It actually reminded me a lot of Huckleberry in Brooklyn. The bartender was very friendly — it was relatively quiet on a Sunday night, but the place is rammed on Fridays and Saturdays. I perused the leather-bound cocktail menu and picked one of the Nordic cocktails: the Skovens Julep (110 krone), which combines walnut-smoked akvavit with fresh chervil, birch syrup, horsetail and nettle tea. It was unlike any cocktail I had ever tried before, but the flavours worked very well together and it really did feel as though I was drinking the essence of Denmark. < / cliché >

Coffee Collective. Vendersgade 6D, Torvehallerne, Nørreport. Website. 
Kent Kaffe Laboratorium. Nørre Farimagsgade 70, Nørreport. CLOSED
Copenhagen Street Food. Trangravsvej 14, Papirøen. Website.
Kødbyens Fiskebar. Flæsketorvet 100, Vesterbro. Website.
Lidkoeb. Vesterbrogade 72B, Vesterbro. Website.