Restaurant review: Franco Manca, Brixton

Unit 4, Market Row SW9 8LD; 020 7738 3021 ;www.francomanca.co.uk

Pizzas from £4.50

Franco Manca is the little restaurant that can do no wrong. A Brixton institution, if you will. Their slow-rising sourdough pizza bases, baked in an authentic Italian wood-burning oven and topped with organic seasonal ingredients are so popular that a second, roomier branch opened last year in Chiswick and a third is set to open at Westfield Stratford in September.

We visited the original SW9 branch on a laid-back Sunday afternoon, where, for the first time, we saw the place sans queue. Friends and families were catching up over lunch, the smell of bread and oregano wafted through the air and friendly staff buzzed about efficiently.

The summer menu boasts gourmet toppings such as courgette, basil and buffalo ricotta with Franco and Lloyd organic Somerset pecorino, and home-cured Gloucester Old Spot ham with mozzarella, buffalo ricotta and wild mushrooms. No Hawaiians here!

We sipped a Samuel Smith’s organic larger and a refreshing homemade lemonade over two of the most wonderful pizzas we’d ever eaten. My friend ordered the tomato, garlic, oregano, capers, olives, anchovies and mozzarella pizza – a fabulous combination of full on flavours, salty and sharp, while I opted for the daily special, a meat pizza Bianca.

Yup, that’s a white pizza – no tomato sauce. It’s a purer kind of pizza, I guess, where nothing interferes with the flavours of the toppings: the essential mozzarella, rare-breed sausages from Gloucestershire, sweet mixed peppers, sharp rocket and salty parmesan. But if that concept baffles you, you can opt in on the tomato sauce!

And that sourdough base really is something. I tend to be a crust-leaver, fearful of filling up too quickly, but a little chilly oil on those soft, fluffy crusts and they’re irresistible. Light, too, meaning there’s room for an ice cream from Brixton’s Ice Cream Parlour just next door!

By Victoria Purcell

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