Pizza Nerds - Peckham, London
Our Rating: ★★★ | ££££ (£20pp) - High quality, authentic Neapolitan and ‘London-style’ pizzas from a pizzaiolo who clearly knows his stuff! (How we rate restaurants)
We have been watching Pizza Nerds slowly come together for weeks, peering through the windows on our walks home and counting down the days until we were able to dine there. It’s practically on our doorstep, tucked in among the independent shops on one of our favourite streets in our local area (Bellenden Road), so the bar was always going to be high.
Yesterday, we finally made it there, and we have to say, it more than lives up to expectations.
We’ve added Pizza Nerds to our list of best pizza restaurants in London!
Here is what makes Pizza Nerds different. It runs two ovens. One is a wood-fired oven turning out proper, puffy, blistered Neapolitan pizza. The other is an electric oven producing the crispy, thin-based London-style pizza that has taken over the city (and socials) over the last few years. Two ovens, two styles, and a chef who genuinely knows how to get the best out of both.
That chef (or, really, we should call him the pizzaiolo) is Davide Parato, and his CV is why we walked in with such high hopes. Davide grew up in the Langhe and Roero hills of Piedmont, around Alba, before moving to London in his twenties with his friend and now business partner Matteo Mangiapane. He went on to become executive chef at the much-loved Crust Bros, where he was crowned Pizza Chef of the Year at the National Pizza Awards, part of a two-time award-winning run for the group. But now he finally has a place of his own, Pizza Nerds and you can feel how much it means to him. The name is well earned too; this is a kitchen that clearly obsesses over fermentation times and pizza flour.
Chef Davide Parato preparing our pizza. We visited in the late afternoon.
What we love most is the philosophy. Davide is proud of his heritage and a devout believer in proper Neapolitan pizza (for the record, so are we; we will take a wood-fired Neapolitan over almost anything), but he is not at all precious about it. He has read the room, embraced the London-style craze, and put serious craft into both. That balance of authentic and trendy, done without cutting any corners, is exactly what we want from a new local.
Details
Website: wwwpizzanerds.co.uk
Instagram: @pizzanerdsuk
Address: 182 Bellenden Road, Peckham, London SE15 4BW
Nearest station: Peckham Rye (Overground)
Opening hours: Mon to Wed 16:00 to 22:00, Thurs to Sun 12:00 to 22:00
Booking: bookable online via Dish Cult.
Our tip would be to try both styles of pizza. Order a Neapolitan one first becuase they are best enjoyed hot and fresh. Then order a London-style pizza after. That way, you get to eat them both hot and fresh, and if you need to take any leftovers home, the London-style will keep much better. We polished both off but its a good tactic if you’re prone to not finishing a meal.
What we ate
We wanted to test the whole point of the place, so we ordered one pizza from each oven (Neapolitan and ‘London-style’ pizzas), plus a dip for the crusts.
Pizzas
Nerds Margh (London-style) - tomato sauce, stracciatella, parmesan, basil, olive oil
Parmigiana (Neapolitan) - tomato sauce, mozzarella, aubergine parmigiana, parmesan, basil
Dips
Bagna verde (a traditional Piedmontese sauce - anchovies, parsley, vinegar, oil)
Nduja Mayo
The Nerds Margh was our London-style pick, and it was a beauty. The base had that signature crisp, thin structure with plenty of flavour, but the thing that stole the show was the stracciatella. Incredibly creamy, rich and almost buttery, it pulled the whole pizza together and made a fairly classic combination feel special and oh so fresh.
For the Neapolitan, we went with the Parmigiana, which was right in our wheelhouse. Soft, airy, a properly charred cornicione, a good tomato base, and aubergine parmigiana worked into the toppings so you essentially get a comforting Italian classic and a pizza in one.
A quick word on the bagna verde dip, because it is absolutely not one to skip. It is a vibrant, herbaceous green sauce from Piedmont, the very region Davide grew up in around Alba, so it feels like a real piece of him on the table. A blend of fresh parsley, capers, anchovies, garlic, olive oil and vinegar, it is bright, herby and properly punchy, exactly the sort of sauce built to cut through rich, savoury food.
We finished with a Frangelico, an Italian hazelnut liqueur, which was sweet, smooth and exactly the gentle, nutty full stop a good pizza dinner deserves.
We would have indulged in their starters, fried menu and desserts (resisting a tiramisu was hard) but we knew our stomachs were not hungry enough on this late afternoon seating, however we fully intend on trying these along with two new pizzas next visit.
Overall thoughts
We had a brilliant time at Pizza Nerds. The pizzas came out spot on, the concept is genuinely fun, and there is real skill and care behind all of it.
If we’re being picky, our only real struggle was that, since I (Zaeem) don’t eat pork, we couldn’t try many of the other pizza options, such as the Nduja or Pepperoni pizzas (much to Alice’s disappointment!), which are probably some of their standout offerings. We completely appreciate that pork is a staple of Italian cuisine, so this is very much our own limitation rather than a criticism of the restaurant. Our point is simply that the menu’s heavier focus on pork-based pizzas did limit our choices a little. We’re certainly not annoyed by it; just noting it for context. With that said, we’re always happy with a Margherita pizza!
More than anything, we love what Davide is doing here. He is proud of where he comes from and serious about proper Neapolitan pizza, but he is happy to give London exactly what it is craving too, and he does both of them properly. That it has all landed near our home stretch of Bellenden Road feels almost unfair but we are buzzing. We will absolutely be back, probably more times than we would care to admit.
Map
182 Bellenden Road, Peckham, London SE15 4BW
