Zia Lucia

Genuine Pizza offering 4 types of 48h slow fermented doughs in Islington, 157 Holloway Road N7 8LX | Tel: 020 7700 3708 | Brook Green, 61 Blythe Road W14 0HP | Tel: 020 7371 4096 | London. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:30 to 22:30 | Seat-in, Take-Away & Delivery.

ZIA LUCIA

http://www.zialucia.com

ZIA LUCIA

Zia Lucia Pizza Restaurant Holloway Road | Homegirl London

Homegirl London’s Food Review: Zia Lucia Pizza Restaurant.

If you’re looking for a North London pizzeria or best pizzas in Islington try the Zia Lucia Pizza Restaurant.

“Homely and friendly independently owned pizzeria serving super tasty authentic pizza on a choice of bases,” Homegirl London At Zia Lucia’s the dough is slow fermented over forty-eight hours and then baked in a handmade wood-fired oven.

I particularly enjoyed the charcoal base which we tried with the Parmigiana toppings (tomatoes, mozzarella, aubergines, Parmigiano).

They had a great selection of vegetarian pizzas like the classic Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, basil), Via Del Campo (tomato, mozzarella, courgettes, aubergines, peppers) and Ortolana (tomato, mozzarella, courgettes, aubergines, peppers).

Zia Lucia Islington | London Restaurant Reviews | DesignMyNight

Bringing genuine pizza to the heart of Islington, Zia Lucia on Holloway Road promises authentic and rustic bites in a casual restaurant setting.

Boasting wood-fired pizza ovens that have been handcrafted themselves in Naples, Zia Lucia keeps pizza authenticity from the off, even boasting a pizza with a vegetable charcoal base.

These pizzas are all set alongside a delicious selection of spritzers, negronis and lashings of prosecco.

Zia Lucia, Holloway Road: restaurant review - Gasholder

Photo: Zia LuciaI have two favourite places to eat pizza in north London.

The other is this new arrival on Holloway Road, closer to Highbury Islington than to Archway; almost opposite the North London Buddhist Centre, in fact.

It worked: we bagged the last two seats in the house, the smallish room already alive with great groups of families feasting, local couples and tiny kids teetering on stools, legs held by fathers pointing out the wood-fired oven.

The point of difference for Zia Lucia – which the owner claims is the friendly name for an auntie in some parts of the world – is the slow, 48-hour fermented doughs: you choose from wholemeal, gluten-free, traditional (‘unconventionally light’, reads the description) and vegetable charcoal, with an ‘evocative flavour, dramatic look, digestive gas-absorbing capacities’.

Here the choice of base made a positive difference: the charcoal dough not only looked dramatic, but its smoky edge really suited the creamy, sharp and earthy toppings.

Zia Lucia, restaurant review: Holloway gets a slice of the action ...

According to Pevsner, “the indifferent S. end of Holloway Road has a scatter of decayed minor C19 ribbon development...” It now has boutique coffee and snacky places (La Muse with a butternut squash and halloumi petit dejeuner “vegetariene”) amid the surviving marble masons and autoparts, secondhand furniture shops, a “couture latex” specialist, porn merchants (webuyanyporn.com), and pizza takeaways (City Pizza, featuring the Hawaiian and the Meat Feast).

Simple shelves high on the walls are stocked with bottles and supplies (big cans of Polpapizza and Carciofi Alla Romana) and each table has its bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar plus a flask of water filled with a stalk of mint, just enough to give it a little tang.

Yet the pizzas are classy, made from 48-hour slow-fermented sourdoughs, twirled by a showy pizzaiolo and cooked in a fierce wood-fired oven imported from Naples, starting with a Margherita at £6.90 and running up to a lavish Arianna at £10.80 (mozzarella, fresh sausage, taleggio goat cheese, pecorino, truffle honey).

Quite why, if you suffered from it, you would head for pizza nonetheless, when, as Daniel Young points out in his global bible, Where to Eat Pizza, published by Phaidon earlier this year, it is the sticky gluten, often 12 per cent or so, developing in the dough, that gives it its strength and elasticity, seems a question too sad to insist on.

Young, incidentally, also points out that the assumption that buffalo mozzarella is always best for pizza (as it certainly is for salads) is no longer true (“fresh, high-quality cow’s milk mozzarella, with its supreme melting qualities, might now be the more appropriate cheese to cook”).

Zia Lucia | Restaurants in Lower Holloway, London

Homely pizzeria where interesting dough is topped by Italian enthusiasm.

The name is Italian for ‘Aunt Lucy’, and the kindly looking lady smiling out at you from its logo was the inspiration for this lovely neighbourhood pizzeria, opened by Highbury locals Gianluca and Claudio in June 2016.

While its branding, flavours and atmosphere are bang on-point, the place still pulses with the sort of old-fashioned charm you only find at an Italian family feast.

They’re interesting, but they don’t exactly transform the flavour, and at £1.50 extra per pizza, quietly push the bill away from bargain status.

Toppings are mostly the more interesting classics – ’nduja, aubergines, broccoli and speck ham (not all at once) – but the pizza chef has added a couple of haute Italian options: the Arianna with mozzarella, sausage, taleggio, pecorino and truffle honey could almost be Caesar’s breakfast buffet.