From what corner of wood-fired hell did the idea of a pizza tasting menu come? In Soho in London this autumn, award-winning pizzaiolo Michele Pascarella – of Napoli on the Road, in Chiswick and Richmond – will be serving pizza as a multi-course fine-dining experience at his new Wardour Street site, complete with curated wine flights. At last, pepperoni arranged with surgical tweezers (said who, exactly?).
Thankfully, La Strada on Aungier Street in Dublin – from the crew behind the now-closed Manifesto in Rathmines, Dublin 6 – keeps it casual in true Neapolitan style. Arguably, the head chef, Lucio Paduano, has more bragging rights than Pascarella, with gold medals from the Pizza World Championships to prove it.
So it is with happy anticipation that I step through the green door on Aungier Street and into a little Italian backstreet: whitewashed walls with red and green shutters, terracotta tiles under dark beams, lanterns at the doorways. The ceiling is midnight blue, with bare bulbs strung across it like washing lines; below, a cobbled floor with tables runs the length of the alley. It feels like eating outside on a warm evening. Playful, a touch stage-set, but disarming and charming – and once the room fills with chatter, it becomes genuinely transporting.
The menu is short and focused; quite different from the Manifesto menu, where there was also a fine-dining element (something I felt never worked). There are a number of snacks and starters, but really, it’s all about pizza, with 15 to choose from.
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The former Manifesto wine list – legendary for its low margins on heavyweight Italian wines and its temperature-controlled cabinet of Tignanello – has been stripped back to wine on tap: white, red and sparkling, with a token soft drink or two.
We start with the buffalo blue cheese mousse (€12), three Mont Blanc whirls of a light mousse framing a neat mound of chopped Wexford strawberries, splashed with balsamic and garnished with pickled red onion. It’s an unlikely match, but the savoury strawberries are the perfect foil to the damp stone of the blue cheese. On the side is focaccia, fresh from the oven. The chef’s green salad (€8) is straightforward.
Quattro formaggi is one of my favourite pizzas, but it is hard to get a good one. At La Strada the summer quattro formaggi (€20) is an unashamed dairy onslaught. Snowy dollops of ricotta, mozzarella stretched out into molten strands, and streaks of buffalo milk blue and goat’s cheese bubble over a base that holds the lot without collapsing. It’s indulgent but balanced.
Beside it, the Puttanesca deluxe (€19) has a concentrated tomato sauce with punches of olives and capers; burrata – milky and yielding – is laid over the top. It has weight and sharpness, and is grown-up with a proper anchovy bite.
And then the Peppa Pig (€21), a white pizza piled with roasted cubes of potato and Agerola smoked mozzarella under a Parmesan vacca rossa fondue. It could easily have been stodgy, but the potatoes have a crisp edge against the soft cheese, soaking up the garlic and rosemary. The fondue is delicious, and the porchetta has just enough fat to slide the whole thing into decadent territory without tipping it into grease. It edges close to carbonara on a pizza – though say that out loud and you risk a whack.
What holds all of this together is the crust – blistered, leopard-spotted underneath, pliant enough to fold but never sagging – a base that takes punishment from these toppings and still comes out dignified.
For dessert, we have Lucio’s “world famous original tiramisu” (€8) served in a glass. It’s a solid rendition of this classic, a creamy layering of egg yolk and mascarpone, with coffee-soaked ladyfingers dusted with cocoa powder.
For drinks, the Valpolicella (€9) works well with the pizza, but the “home-made” lemonades are less convincing: Monin peach syrup swamps the passion fruit and peach (€5), while watermelon syrup does the same to the strawberry and watermelon (€5).
What’s clever here is not just that the pizza is good – though it is very good – but that the whole operation has been rebooted for survival. Manifesto straddled trattoria and fine dining, with a wine cellar to match. La Strada is sharper: a Neapolitan backstreet set, a list pared to 15 pizzas, and kegged wine on tap. Manifesto’s wine cellar may be gone, but La Strada’s blistered bases and margins make more sense than any fine-dining fantasy.
Dinner for three with a glass of wine and two lemonades was €107.50.
The verdict: A stripped-back Neapolitan pizza joint.
Food provenance: Italicatessen, Fresh Market, St Tola, Campania imports.
Vegetarian options: Plenty of vegetarian options that can be adapted for vegans.
Wheelchair access: No accessible room or toilet.
