Donna Margherita: An Italian Place that Stands Out, But Not Necessarily for its Pizza

Name Donna Margherita
Address 183 Lavender Hill, London  SW11 5TE
Phone 020 7228 2660
Web site http://www.donna-margherita.com/
Main dish price range   £7.75-9.90
Rating  3.5 Stars.  Great restaurant if you're there for the atmosphere, the football, and the burrata.  
Recommended dishes: Burrata with eggplant puree and pesto, Saltimbocca Fritto e al Forno 

Nick and I, as we've indicated on this blog before, are nothing if not suckers for a good Neapolitan pizza.  In 2009 we took a special trip to Rome, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast, partially inspired by our near weekly trips to our favorite Neapolitan pizza place in New York.  Our regular ritual involved making a pilgrimage there after the gym or work, gulping down a whole pizza each-- savoring the gooey center and the pitch-perfect fresh basil-- before washing it down with a glass of house red wine. Perfezione! 

Football Jerseys inside Donna Margherita.

So we were thrilled when an Italian friend told us about Donna Margherita, a small trattoria in South London that she said was a favorite haunt of employees working at the Italian embassy. This seemed like the perfect spot for us to continue our quest to locate and consume London's best Neapolitan pizzas, a journey that had already made us fans of Exmouth Market's Santore. Reading up on Donna Margherita, we were even further encouraged by its bevy of followers: No less a vaunted source than Dan Lepard, the former pastry chef at St. John's, has called it a source of "near-perfect" pizza.

When we arrived on a sunny Saturday, we were immediately taken in by Donna Margherita's quirky, down-to-earth charm.  Italian soccer jerseys hung on one wall, as did a black and white picture of a person we're told is among Southern Italy's most famous comics-cum-mimes. (Side note: This would be a killer place to watch an Italian Serie A game.) A sculpture/city scene made largely using pizza dough stood in one corner begging for attention. We immediately got the meal off to an auspicious start by ordering a selection of antipasti (not on the menu, but you can ask for it), which included what turned out to be a delicious plate-- a large chunk of mouthwateringly perfect fresh burrata cheese, flown in from Italy and presented in a bed of aubergine puree. Like a good burrata it cut open to reveal a gooey rich  center, rich as butter. A smear of homemade pesto snaked along the side of our plate, tasting like perfection.

Donna Margherita: A burrata to remember.

Next up, we ventured into some main courses.  Although we were there to taste the pizza, at least primarily, I decided to also tuck into one of the dishes on the menu's "homemade pasta" section-- the O'Scialatiell ro' re Ferdinando, a classic seafood scialatielli dish. (On our trip years ago to Amalfi, one of my favorite meals was a seafood scialatielli cooked by a nice grandmotherly like woman in a tiny restaurant in the basement of her house-- so any dish of this sort has a special place in the depths of my food memories.)  At Donna Margherita, the pasta had that perfect consistency, bordering on gummy, that makes homemade pasta such a consistent delight.  The seafood-- which included bits of squid, clams, and a giant prawn on top-- also tasted  fresh and well prepared.  The dish, however, was a bit more salty and garlicky than I would typically consider ideal, and could have used a few more tomatoes to cut those flavors.  Still though, a solid offering.  

Sampling the pasta offerings: the O'Scialatiell ro re' Fernando.  

We then turned to the main attraction: the pizza. Nick and I always try to test a new Neapolitan pizza place by testing the most simple iteration of the dish-- the Margherita pizza, which ideally should be the perfect balance between tart tomatoes, warm mozzarella, and pieces of cool fresh basil.  The best version of this dish is presented piping hot, with an almost liquid center. At Donna Margherita, however, the pizza came out lukewarm, ruining some of the pizza's inherent magic.  The middle felt cool and soggy and some of the tastes dulled by this presentation. A friend who ordered a slightly more complicated pie-- the Prosciutto e Funghi-- said he felt similarly: the pizza was adequate, but definitely not a knockout.

Not living up to the hype: The Margherita pizza at Donna Margherita.

Our meal, however, did include one very pleasant main-course surprise. The Italian friend who joined us skipped the pizza altogether, choosing instead to get one the restaurant's saltimboccas, a small sandwich native to Naples. (Not to be confused with the "saltimboccas" endemic to Rome and parts of Switzerland, Spain, and Greece-- a meat dish that involves marinating prosciutto or veal in wine or saltwater.)  I'd the Naples version of this sandwich before, and always marveled at the texture of the pizza dough that's used as the sandwich bread, which some restaurants, Donna Margherita included, make crunchy and crackly-- almost like a cracker-- by frying and then baking.  Here, this hard-to-find dish was practically perfect.  The restaurant offers versions with four different fillings, and the Saltimbocca Fritto e al Forno, filled with provola cheese, cherry tomatoes, fresh rocket, and shavings of parmesan and porchetta, was a stunner. If I lived anywhere near Lavender Hill, this dish alone would make me a Donna-Margherita regular.

Taste the crunch: The divine Saltimbocca Fritto e al Forno.

All in all, Nick and I were glad to have visited Donna Margherita, and would definitely come back again for sandwiches and some quality football/soccer watching.  Crowds of Italian speaking families also added to the place's quirky charm. For now though, our go-to Neapolitan pizza place remains Exmouth Market's Santore.  But, our journey to try all of London's best-reviewed places continues. The lengthy lines so far have prevented us from trying Franco Manga in Brixton, but we'll report back once we do.

Santoré: We Found Our Go-To Neapolitan Pizza Place...for Now

Name Santoré

Address 59-61 Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 4QL

Diners outside at Santore.

Phone 020 7812 1488
Web site none
Main dish price range £6.20-£13.80
Rating 4 stars. A stunner of a restaurant with only occasional misses.  
Recommended dishes Margherita pizza 

One could be forgiven for wondering if Santoré, our new favorite pizza joint in East London, even meets this blog's definition of an ethnic restaurant: "a restaurant serving the food of a particular ethinc group, with an aim to primarily serving expatriates from that ethnic group."  Located in trendy Exmouth Market, this bustling cafe, which strives to make authentic Neapolitan pizza, attracts a motley crowd-- a few tables of Italians, but also lots of big groups of red-faced, drunken British people just enjoying the big glasses of wine and pizza available by the meter. When Nick and I first walked in, we felt it was sort of part-way, if not all the way, in the ethnic category.  The waiters greeted us with a volley of friendly"buongiornos" and the pizza oven lurking in the corner definitely looked as authentic as authentic could be, based on our past experiences in Naples.

The typical scene at Santore.

But once we bit into the pizza we were convinced we had to include this brightly lit, low-on-atmosphere locale on the food blog. Although Santoré offers a few things that don't feel too authentically Italian (Dutch Veal Escalopes with Breadcrumbs, anyone?) diners who stick to the Neapolitan pizzas, Santore's specialty, are in for a real treat. We recommend the standard margherita pizza that appears in the pizze section of the menu-- not the pizze special section-- and sells for £6.20.  Like at any good Neapolitan pizza restaurant, this single-plate, one-person pie came to us hot and fresh out of the oven. The basil pieces were massive; the sauce tasted so fresh it burst with flavor; and the pizzaiolo nailed the absolute hardest part of the enterprise-- the center. The middle of the pie achieved that perfect, delicate balance where it managed to be hot, gooey, and melt-in-your mouth delicious, without going so far that the pizza lost all integrity when you tried to lift up the first slice.

My half of our margherita was gone pretty quickly.

Before we go on with our thoughts about Santoré though, a bit of background on our pizza philosophy: We're generally what you'd call simple pizza people. There are few places-- Pauly Gee's in Brooklyn, being a big exception-- where we ever gobble up pizzas loaded with non-standard ingredients like rocket (a.k.a. arugula), lemon, and olives. At most of our most beloved Neapolitan pizza joints, we prefer to let the perfect, bare, basics (tomato, cheese, basil, and big hunks of sea salt in the crust) stand out without too much adornment. Our favorite Stateside pizza place, in fact, so dogmatically adheres to the simple-is-best philosophy that on most days it only offers five basic pizzas on its  menu-- and not one of them has meat.

So, the margherita is always a big test for us.  A secondary test that we expect most places with a good margherita to ace: The buffalo margherita, a version of the basic pie where regular mozzarella is replaced with much stronger, buffalo mozzarella instead, usually producing a more delicious result. Surprisingly though, this is not the case at Santoré.  When we ordered this pizza-- which costs £7.65 and appears in the pizze special section of the menu-- they gave us a pie that was still perfectly executed from a crust standpoint. The cheese though was chilled in the middle, and felt like it had just been pulled out of cold water by the chef-- a bizarre choice that our waiter seemed to indicate was purposeful on the restaurant's part. If so, Santoré, as good as you are, let me tell you: You aren't doing yourself any favors with that approach.

The mixed salad.

Besides the pizza, the other things on the menu were impressive without being a total wow. The mixed salad (£3.50) was a nice way to start dinner, being a pleasant mix of arugula and cherry tomatoes, dusted with crispy ham.  And the sauteed spinach (£2.40), which was buttery and piping hot, also made a lovely side. Santoré also gets some bonus points for having ample seating outside, which makes for a nice atmosphere you can watch the hustle and bustle of Exmouth Market. These cold winter days, they're heating up the outdoor tables with red heat lamps-- with surprisingly successful results. (The lamps produced the odd light in our pictures though.)

For now, we're loving our post-gym trips to Santoré-- so much so we've already been back three times. We're going to keep looking for that pitch-perfect buffalo margherita though. We have a few more far-flung places to try that we crowd sourced with some Italians we know, so we'll be reporting back with more reviews soon.