Naples’ most famous pizza joint, L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele – featured in the bestselling travel memoir Eat Pray Love – is set to open a branch in London.
“I love my pizza so much,” author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote on her visit to the restaurant, where she ordered a margherita with double mozzarella, “that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair.”
The pizzeria also featured in the film of the book, in which Elizabeth Gilbert, played by Julia Roberts, can be seen mumbling the same lines in between in between bites of the classic Neapolitan dish.
The restaurant, which has been in the same location since 1930 and is run by a family whose pizza heritage goes back to 1870, is known for making the best pizzas in Naples and is a point of pilgrimage for pizza lovers around the world.
Pilgrims from the UK won’t need to travel quite so far now, thanks to the soon-to-open London branch, which will be on Stoke Newington’s Church Street.
The London restaurant will follow the same formula that has won it acclaim in Naples. This means only serving margherita and marinara pizzas (although, in the London branch, there will be two specials on rotation), as well as offering the same wine and beers that are served in the original pizzeria.
- 125 Church Street, Stoke Newington, London
