I Tried London’s Very First Pizza Tasting Menu

Pizza making is an art – we all know that. But few pizzerias take that art quite as seriously as Napoli on the Road. Having started out peddling fresh, hot, doughy Neapolitan pizzas from a truck in Richmond, the multi-award-winning pizzeria now has three brick-and-mortar London restaurants: the original in Richmond, a second in Chiswick, and a brand-new third joint in Soho, just off Oxford Street.

Napoli on the Road’s pizza tasting menu is served in its snazzy new Soho restaurant.

With its organically curving concrete interiors and minimalist dressing, you could be forgiven, on stepping inside, for thinking the piping hot dishes emerging from Napoli on the Road’s open kitchen were small plates paired with natty wines. There are a few starters drawing on Italian street food traditions, but pizza is the order of the day here – though you’d be right to expect something a little more elevated than what you’re used to. Napoli on the Road is Europe’s No.1 Pizzeria, after all – named as such by 50 Top Pizza for three years running (though naturally excluding Italy).

‘Pizza has traditionally been associated with being quick, casual and accessible, so perhaps people haven’t always thought about what else can be built around it,’ says Napoli founder Michele Pascarella. From his third (and, he says, final) pizza joint, Pascarella is dishing up the classic pies that have bagged prizes the world over, as well as the world’s first pizza tasting menu.

Why? ‘We wanted to challenge the idea of what pizza can be and push it somewhere unexpected,’ he tells me. ‘We love pizza, and we also love the idea of showing people another side of it, one they might not usually see. Pizza is something everyone knows and loves, often associated with something quick, casual and familiar, but there is so much craft and creativity behind it.’

‘A tasting menu felt like a natural way to explore that. We wanted to give people a completely different way of experiencing pizza without taking away the fun of pizza,’ Pascarella adds. The result is a seven-course feast that deconstructs and reassembles the humble Italian pizza. We begin at the base, with little piles of tomatoes at four stages of reduction: zero hours, two hours, six hours and ten hours. It’s a disconcerting start – four red blobs on a white plate, with no bread or anything else to dip in – but it soon makes sense: these vibrant red beauties hold their own and, for once, can be left alone to shine.

Quality tomatoes are given a moment to shine.

Next comes a selection of fritti – fried polenta, nerano frittatina and a potato crocché – before the pizza begins in earnest. The first, on a white base, is topped with artichoke three ways when I visit, as asparagus is just slipping out of season; the vegetable is lifted by anchovy extract and freshly ground black pepper, while fior di latte and pecorino add a tangy, salty richness.

Next is a Margherita like you’ve never tasted it before: a crispy barley and rye base topped with the comforting, slow-cooked datterino tomatoes from the first course, finished with a slice of buffalo mozzarella, dots of tomato jam and wild garlic pesto, and a sprinkling of oregano. Depth and freshness abound.

But the final slice is the real pièce de résistance: Napoli’s famous Ricordi D’Infanzia – named Pizza of the Year by 50 Top Pizza in 2025 – is elevated to lofty new heights with a carnival of slow-cooked meats (pork ribs, oxtail, beef cheek, beef short ribs, beef shin) making for the most decadent ragu. Finished with Napoli’s signature parmesan fondue swirl, it’s served with evident pride by Napoli’s waitstaff – and rightly so. Rich, unctuous and immediately moreish, I did my best to savour every bite (and resist licking the plate afterwards). I’ll be back soon for the full-size version.

The veal-stuffed padellino turns out to be a surprising favourite.

These three generous slices are interrupted by a stuffed padellino, a beautifully crunchy triangular sandwich packed with thin slices of veal breast and lashings of tuna sauce – a surprise that turns out to be my pizza-obsessed partner’s favourite course. As Pascarella puts it, the menu ‘is still pizza at heart, just presented in a completely different way. For us, it is about showing that pizza is not a finished concept. There is still so much room to explore.’

For Pascarella, the quality of ingredients is at the heart of that exploration. ‘We are constantly tasting, experimenting and looking for something new. We are always discovering new ingredients, talking to producers and looking for new combinations or techniques that could work. That research is part of our everyday life, not something we only do for the tasting menu,’ Pascarella says.

And while Napoli has always had a wine list, the tasting menu heralds the restaurant’s first wine pairing, where quality matters just as much. ‘We put a huge amount of thought into the pairing and are constantly looking for interesting producers and wines with personality. We have some really exciting bottles, and we want people to discover wines they might not normally associate with pizza,’ Pascarella says. Most strikingly, the menu doesn’t stick to Italy: sake, English sparkling and Piedmont moscato all appear across the journey.

By this point, appetites well and truly sated, the trio of miniature desserts was just the ticket: a traditional zuppetta napoletana pastry, a strawberry and ricotta tart, and a miniature magnum (or ‘stecco’ in Italy), its thick chocolate coating studded with hazelnuts.

Napoli on the Road founder Michele Pascarella it was named Global Pizza Maker of the Year by 50 Top Pizza in 2023.

It’s a happy ending to an enlightening journey through pizza and all its constituent parts – though the menu didn’t always look this way. When it was first announced last summer, it was pegged as six courses, involving salads, focaccia, a triple-cooked pizza and a wine flight sourced entirely from Campania. But ‘a lot of tasting, testing and changing’ has brought us to today’s seven-course offering, Pascarella says. ‘We tried different courses, combinations, portions and sequences until it started to feel right. The biggest challenge was making sure it still felt like pizza, not a fine-dining menu that happened to contain pizza.
‘And because we are very seasonal in the way we approach our food, the menu will never be completely static,’ he adds. ‘There will always be something changing, whether it’s a new ingredient, a different combination or a new course. That’s part of the fun for us, and it means the experience can evolve throughout the year.’

West Londoners have long loved Napoli on the Road, but this menu is exclusive to the shiny new Soho spot, which feels like ‘a natural home’ for Pascarella. ‘It is our most ambitious space, and it gives us the opportunity to create something that goes beyond a traditional pizza dinner.’

He adds that the concept, the first of its kind, ‘brings together food, culture, art, music and fashion’ and that ‘Soho is the perfect place to do that: a space where we can challenge expectations, have fun and keep creating new experiences around what a pizzeria can be.’

The the pizza tasting menu is served exclusively at Napoli on the Road Soho.

BOOK IT

Napoli On The Road’s Pizza Tasting Menu is available exclusively in Soho (140 Wardour St, London W1F 8ZT), priced at £65pp with the optional wine flight £40pp. Book at napoliontheroad.com