Eco

Pizza is having a bit of a renaissance moment. New pizzerias are springing up offering discerning toppings, washed down with Prosecco at Homeslice or margaritas at Voodoo Ray’s.

Eco doesn’t quite fit into this category as it’s been going for over two decades, but aside from classic pizzas like the margherita, they also have less conventional varieties like oven charred aubergine, mushroom and zucchini, and beef meatballs with chilli. A pizza bianco with sliced potato, sausage and chorizo is pleasantly bound together by a strong-tasting gorgonzola, the dough is thin (made from an in-house blend of flours) and the crust bubbles up at the edges. It’s a bonus that it’s just £8.50, the rest are priced between £5.95 and £9.50.

There are plenty of other dishes however. From the specials, a starter of mushrooms, spinach, taleggio cheese and chorizo arrives sizzling in a griddle pan. It needs to cool down before the flavour of each ingredient can be appreciated, but it’s a good dish. There are various interesting dips like the thick chickpea and smoky pancetta, the mild, creamy goat’s cheese and red pepper, and the slightly less exciting aubergine and tomato.

Also from the specials list is seared cod with black onion mashed potato. The addition of capers and butter makes for a tasty dressing, but the fish suffers from drowning in too much oil. A side dish of courgette fritters is unremarkable.

It’s pretty busy for a Monday night and the tables around us stick to pizza, which is what they do best; they also claim to be one of the first London restaurants to serve sourdough pizzas.