Napoli On The Road

This restaurant, concentrating on Neapolitan pizza but also serving pasta, opened in September 2019. It was set up by Michelle Pascarella and Paolo Cimmino, who are both from Naples. Mr Pascarella worked in various Naples pizzerias, including the one run by his parents, from the age of eleven. Before this restaurant, he previously had a pizza truck that toured around west and north west London. The dining room was brightly lit, with some wall tiles and the pizza oven visible at the back of the dining room.

The pizza dough is made with OO flour mixed with another flour that has more bran, and is allowed to rest from between one and two days. It has a relatively low protein content compared to the classical Neapolitan recipes, allowing a high level of hydration. The pizza oven gets to 450C, not quite the 500C that you find in a classic Neapolitan pizza oven, and the pizzas take about 90 seconds to cook, rather longer than the 60 seconds of a classic Naples pizza.

The two pizzas that we tried had a good, pliable base. Toppings were nothing special, with quite basic button mushrooms and tomatoes that didn’t have great depth of flavour, but the overall result was certainly quite enjoyable (12/20 in both cases). Although the base was good, it is not in the league of somewhere like l’Oro di Napoli. Focaccia was a touch dry and arrived after the pizzas, despite being ordered as a starter (12/20). The side salad was distinctly ordinary, some leaves a little limp and brown at the edges, and the customer was left with bottles of oil and vinegar to make their own dressing (10/20).

Coffee was from Borbone, a company based in Naples. The bill was £23 per person with beer to drink. Napoli On The Road is a pleasant addition to the Chiswick dining scene. The pizza base was quite good and the staff were friendly.