A stroll from Highgate to Stroud Green had as its final destination La Porchetta, a local stalwart that operates in an increasingly competitive environment for pizza in this neck of the woods; as one commentator put it there are more pizzerias per hectare in Stroud Green than in Naples.

So how does La P fare? On a Friday evening it wasn’t difficult to get a table, which is not how I remember it a few years ago. Famished, one of our number made the rash request that everything we ordered be brought at the same time. This instruction being followed to the letter it meant that mains of pizza and green salad arrived with olives and bruschetta – meaning that in the intervening twenty minutes or so I was left to glug (pretty good) Montepulciano with a rebelliously grumblyhungry stomach. A waiter with more initiative might have at least brought us the olives – or I guess we could have just asked for them. Either way it was a mistake.

The pizza was excellent – the diavolo had salty, meaty pepperoni and a tasty base. I demolished it tout de suite. The salad was nothing beyond chopped stuff but went the way of the pizza too as I was a very hungry chap.

Otherwise, the service was a bit off – they could easily have sold us another bottle of vino (we were four at the table) and plates were cleared before they were barely finished, indicating that our presence was no longer required. Which would have been understandable if we had been behaving boorishly (we weren’t). Or if there was a queue out of the door. Tellingly that wasn’t the case.

6/10

To see which other restaurants I’ve visited in 2016 check out my GoogleMap

London Restaurants Italian La Porchetta Restaurant Review stroud green