It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that as a middle-aged man churning out two and a half thousand words a week about some restaurant or other, I’m about as far from the food and drink zeitgeist as it’s possible to be. Restaurant blogs have been dead for years, local papers too, and even the broadsheets are gradually fading away. Instagram influencers are passé too, even if Reading’s handful are still scrounging the occasional free meal (the latest from the Hilton in Kennet Island). Nope, apart from the occasional increasingly desperate Substack, food reviewing is all about TikTok and Instagram reels these days.
The most prominent is an account called Topjaw. Topjaw, for the uninitiated, consists of a posh bloke with floppy hair (who used to be a model) in front of the camera and a less photogenic bloke, presumably also posh, behind it. The posh bloke with floppy hair interviews restaurateurs in London getting vox pops about where they think you can find the best pizza, burgers, coffee and so on in the capital. He’s trying to perfect that fake almost-estuary accent posh people do when they’re trying to sound less posh, like Tony Blair used to do. He’s not managed it yet.
The usual suspects come up in those vox pops time and again – the Dalston bakery Dusty Knuckle, the Dexter burger at The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park, the Soho hype factory that is new pub The Devonshire (a place where nobody can snag a reservation but there are mysteriously always tables available for celebrities, critics and, well, Topjaw). We’re never paid by any restaurant we feature, says their bio, although they’re not averse to doing paid partnerships with the likes of Bicester Village, of all places. They may not be paid a fee, but God knows if they pay for their food.
Still, all power to them: their format is quick and entertaining, and you find yourself watching it whether you like them or not. It’s already spawning imitators – mainly in Bristol, where you see some people trying the vox pop format – and maybe one day it will translate into a TV show for them, or a paid gig or an appearance on Strictly or I’m A Celebrity.
You might wonder what any of this has to do with Reading, so I should explain. A couple of months ago, during a bumper week of tosspots on Topjaw, they interviewed not only Ed Sheeran (who turns out to be as basic as you would expect) but also hereditary columnist and bigoted human bin fire Giles Coren. Coren was clearly desperate to appeal to a new demographic so was doing his usual dreary, sweary trying too hard schtick, only even more manic than usual.
But in the course of dispensing his tiresome opinions he happened to say that he thought the best pizza in London was done by Zia Lucia. “They have this charcoal base which apparently doesn’t make you fart” he added, not as hilariously as he intended. Hang on, I thought, haven’t they just opened in Reading?
Well, yes, they have. Zia Lucia opened at the start of April on St Mary’s Butts, where ASK used to be, their first branch outside London. Their website talks about their origins in Islington over 15 years ago, and they also bandy around the slightly random stat that they are the world’s 38th best pizza chain (before you get too excited, Pizza Pilgrims finished 27 places above them and the Big Mamma Group, which Coren loathes, came third). Even so a first branch outside London, coming to a town that had lost Franco Manca and Buon Appetito, felt like it was worth investigating.
The clincher was hearing another anecdote about the charcoal base: I was chatting to my friend Reggie over lunch a couple of weeks ago, and he asked where was on my to do list.
“I’d like to see you review Zia Lucia” he said. “I went there just after it opened and had the weirdest experience. My waiter was explaining to me that they have four different kinds of bases and he was telling me about the charcoal one. The great thing about it, he said, is that it goes right through you.” Reggie imitated the waiter doing a mime which was meant to illustrate it doing, well, that.
“He used those exact words?”
“Yeah, he did. I couldn’t believe it.”
I told that story to my friend Jerry as we strolled down Broad Street in the sunshine, just in time for our dinner reservation.
“Oh, I could do with that charcoal base!” he said, before telling me a long story about how he was on some kind of drug trial which had made his trips to the throne room fewer and further between than he was used to. “Honestly, it’s so stressful! I’m going about once every three days at the moment and it’s really not right. Sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this just before dinner.”
“No, it’s absolutely fine” I said. I don’t know if it was hitting fifty, or just the continued deepening of my friendship with Jerry, but I felt oddly touched that we’d reached the ‘openly discussing bodily functions’ stage. “To be honest, if I don’t go at least once a day I start to worry.”
“Exactly! You can use all of this in your review by the way, I don’t mind you talking about it. Maybe you can get some laughs out of it.”
I decided that I would – an angle’s an angle, and that charcoal base was definitely an angle – and then I told Jerry a couple of stories on a similar theme, which hypocritically I’m not reproducing here.
I think I maybe ate in ASK, which used to be where Zia Lucia is now, just the once, before I wrote a restaurant blog (and possibly, had standards). It was a huge site that got split in two when ASK left, with Biryani Mama on one side and Zia Lucia on the other. It’s a perfectly pleasant room, all white tiles, yellow walls, a spot of terra cotta and marble tables, with a bigger room out back that I didn’t see. We were seated at the front, by the window, and I thought it was a nice spot, neutral and unexceptionable.
The menu focused almost exclusively on pizza – a handful of starters and sharing plates and then into the main event. Mostly traditional, with some notable omissions – no pepperoni, which might disappoint some of you, and no anchovies and capers, which disappointed me. They started at eleven quid and maxed out just over fifteen, although most of their expensive pizzas were boxed off in a section marked Le Leggenderie and given names like “Leonardo da Vin-Cheese”: it’s what the great man might have wanted. We grabbed a negroni sbagliato each and sipped away, menu deliberations on the back burner as we had a good old natter.
When our server came to take our order, we had The Conversation about the variety of bases on offer. He explained that they had four different doughs – traditional, gluten free, wholemeal and the legendary charcoal base.
“The thing about it is…” he said, as Jerry and I shifted forward in our seats. How was he going to describe this phenomenon? “…you eat it, and it doesn’t leave you feeling bloated the way some pizzas can.”
So delicately put, and he didn’t do the mime: I was disappointed.
“But although it looks black, if you had it in a blind taste you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between it and the traditional base.” I did think, possibly churlishly, that given that it was two quid extra I’d have liked it to taste different, but I guess some people are really worried, like £2 worried, about breaking wind. Jerry was sold, anyway, on the basis that anything that helped sort his backlog, so to speak, was money well spent.
I felt guilty about ordering lots of food with a man who’d told me he was having digestive setbacks, but I managed to persuade him to share an appetiser with me. Bruschetta verde was a pleasant little thing, a piece of toast halved and topped with fresh, light ricotta with a hint of citrus, zigzagged with a pesto that, for me, was a little lacking in oomph. The bread was also a little nondescript, considering they were so proud of their pizza bases and their focaccia. But all that sounds sniffier than I mean to be: it was a pleasant thing to share. It cost seven pounds fifty.
Our pizzas came hot on the heels of us polishing that off, with a speed verging on too brisk. The restaurant wasn’t busy and they didn’t need to turn our table, so I don’t understand why they didn’t let us settle in for a little longer: I reckon they’d have got at least a couple of drinks out of us. The feeling of time being unnecessarily concertinaed was, if anything, exacerbated by their decision to drop by our table mid-pizza and offer us a shot glass of limoncello each. A lovely gesture, don’t get me wrong, and not one we were going to turn down, but shouldn’t it have come towards the end of the meal?
Anyway, on to the pizzas. With my first choice – anything with anchovies – not on the menu I defaulted to my second choice, the trusty ‘nduja. Zia Lucia serves theirs simply – just tomato, mozzarella and ‘nduja, no pepperoni, hot honey, basil or other distractions. And actually it had a lot to like about it: the mozzarella was plentiful and good quality and the ‘nduja was freely and indiscriminately applied. You got a lot of it, more than you might at Sarv’s Slice, although it wasn’t quite as winningly pokey as the stuff at Mama’s Way. The tomato sauce was deeper and fruitier than Donald Sinden’s voice (check me out, topical as ever).
And I couldn’t fault the base – enough structure, enough floppiness, a satisfying chew. It didn’t have performative blistering or leopard-spotting, but it was a very creditable effort. It was, in short, a very competently done pizza. Just a few ingredients, all really well put together, no gilding the lily at all. So why wasn’t I more excited about it, and why aren’t I more excited telling you about it? Is that pizza fatigue – mine, or the nation’s – or was it something else?
Jerry’s pizza told a similar story. He had chosen the Parma ham and burrata, on that methane-absorbing black base, and you again couldn’t argue with the quality. The Parma ham was really top-notch – coarse, dry and salty, without the sheen that comes when you exhume it from a plastic coffin. There was a slicer behind the counter, with mortadella on it, so I’m assuming they slice their ham on the premises, but either way it was very good. The burrata was decent, too – I wouldn’t personally have a big ball of cold cheese slap bang in the middle of a hot pizza, but it was Jerry’s order, not mine.
Otherwise it had all the same pluses as my pizza: a cracking tomato sauce, a good mozzarella – not fior di latte, I assume, because only one pizza on the menu specifically mentions that – and a base that was sturdy where you wanted it to be but with give in the middle. That brings us on to that much vaunted charcoal base. Jerry let me try some, and it tasted unremarkable; the server was right, I think, about the blind taste.
I also ordered a Gorgonzola dip for my crust. Jerry and I both tried it and couldn’t work out whether they’d brought us the garlic one by mistake, or if it was just criminally light on the blue cheese.
By the time our pizzas were done – I had to help Jerry out with his, but I’m good like that – we’d been in there just over half an hour. And again I thought what a shame it was that the restaurant didn’t have two gears, that it didn’t have the know-how or emotional intelligence to switch from swift to leisurely. We were offered dessert menus and told that the cannolo, the thing I fancied, was not on the menu that night.
They came back a little while later and we ordered desserts and digestivi, an Amaro Montenegro apiece. Like the two of us, they were mostly sweet, slightly bitter and rather complex. But, also like the two of us, they were arguably not at their best: I expected my amaro to come luxuriating in an oversized glass, chinking with ice and rounded out with orange. To have it room temperature, sticky and filled to the brim of a shot glass, felt like such a waste. I half expected people to form a ring around me and chant “DOWN IT!” until I’d polished it off, which is about as far from the experience of drinking amaro as you can possibly get.
My dessert had been recommended by my server – who I do have to say was excellent all evening, if far too efficient – and, surprise surprise, it was tiramisu. I know I order this a lot, but in my defence my first choice was off the menu. I’ve had tiramisu many times in the course of writing this blog, and like Goldilocks I’ve often had ones that are too boozy or not boozy enough, too creamy or not creamy enough. They rarely seem to be just right, and Zia Lucia’s was no exception. I loved how thoroughly it had been carpeted in cocoa, and the booze levels were just right, but it had a little too much sponge and slightly too little cream. I liked it, I finished it – I’m not a monster – but it could have been better.
Jerry’s choice was far superior. Gelato – although it was more like ice cream as far as I could tell – came in a handful of flavours and Jerry had chosen a solitary scoop of pistachio. I had an introductory spoonful and that was enough for me to be very impressed. The texture was smooth and glossy, no wayward ice crystals, and the flavour was spot on. I’d like to think Zia Lucia makes its own ice cream, but if they don’t I’d love to know where they get it from. It was the perfect way to end the meal, and infinitely preferable to the more expensive dish I had ordered.
Our meal came to ninety-four pounds, including the service charge, and all told we were out in just over an hour. That’s not a huge amount of time to spend that kind of money, and it sums up to me the real problem with Zia Lucia. It all felt more functional than I’m sure they intended it to be, a restaurant where you were too hurried to enjoy la dolce vita. They didn’t need our table, and I wish they’d seemed in slightly less of a hurry to part us from it.
I suspect it was carelessness more than calculation, but it’s still a blunder. A restaurant that brings out the limoncello before you’ve finished your main course – that brings your digestivo in a shot glass – has forgotten that meals aren’t just food. They are experiences too. They’ve been open for two months, and our server told us they’ve been steadily busy since they opened, but I hope they learn that lesson. It made me miss Buon Appetito, who never, ever, got that wrong.
But never mind. Jerry and I beetled off to the Nag’s for a post dinner drink, but it was rammed with people watching the football. So instead we wandered up Russell Street and ended up in the Castle Tap. There was a loud, entertaining band in the front room with a touch of surf guitar about them, the garden was packed with people who had wrapped up warmer than us.
But we found a little space in the back room where a couple of big, raucous groups were having a wonderful time, and had a proper chinwag – about Jerry’s holiday in Scarborough, about my honeymoon, about the weird set of circumstances that led to us becoming friends and what a glad happenstance that was. Jerry loved the Castle Tap – “it’s like having a drink in someone’s garage!” – and my night there reminded me what a special, eclectic and chaotic place it was. The evening started reasonably well, but it ended better. A couple of days later I messaged Jerry to ask if he had experienced any noteworthy after effects from that charcoal base. Thankfully no! was the response.
I’ve thought a lot about Zia Lucia in the course of writing this, trying to work out why I didn’t like it more. Their end product is unquestionably good, even if the experience left a little to be desired. But it didn’t feel like it had soul, in the way that Mama’s Way or Sarv’s Slice do, and I’m not sure it even replicated the buzz of Franco Manca when it first hit Reading. Zia Lucia felt more like the likes of ASK, or Strada, or even Pizza Express, and given its backstory and its small footprint I just expected a little more. I’m not saying this just to disagree with Giles Coren, although to be fair he is wrong about almost everything all of the time, but: best pizza in London? It’s not even the best pizza in Reading.
That’s not to say it’s bad, because it’s absolutely not. I might even go there again at some point, to try other things on the pizza menu, to have some antipasti, to try their focaccia or finally snaffle that cannolo. But I don’t know when that will be, because it didn’t make that kind of impression. I hate to paraphrase the waiter who so impressed Reggie when Zia Lucia first opened, but the experience of eating there, well, it sort of goes right through you.
Zia Lucia – 6.8
65 St Mary’s Butts, RG1 2LG
0118 2250011
Edible Reading 