It’s TODAY!!! 🙂 International Pizza Day! You have to eat pizza today or at least plan a visit to a pizzeria soon! We decided to commemorate this day with a special entry. An entry in which we will show you 9 places where you should eat pizza in Warsaw in our opinion. As usual, the list is made by us and subjective, these are all places that appeal to us from various reasons – sometimes they’re new, sometimes hidden, sometimes oldschool but they should be mentioned since they’re important for the history of pizza in Warsaw even though we don’t go there that much nowadays.
We read the comments below our Sunday post on Facebook closely and considered everything even though it wasn’t easy because apart from several places that were submitted may times there was a lot of places that were submitted only once. We chose additional spots to visit counting the number of votes and sometimes the pictures which really say a lot about pizza. But don’t worry, we’ll check the remaining places too 🙂 Just give s more time 🙂 This is the first 9 places where you should eat a pizza. In the end of the entry, we included a few words about places we visited where you shouldn’t really go to have a pizza in our opinion.
PS. It’s not really a ranked list however I have to admit that Top 3 is a Top 3 😉 The rest is in a more or less random order 😉
9 PLACES FOR A PIZZA IN WARSAW:
1)Al Capone – ul. Adama Asnyka 6 (Ochota)
Al Capone got on our list in the very last minute and killed it! Not very popular, hidden somewhere in small alleys of Old Ochota. With a vibe, quite romantic in the evening if you’re thinking of a dinner for two! An absolutely perfect pizza with addictive dough, great tomato sauce and a good amount of real Italian fior di latte. If you like a lot of toppings on your pizza, try Capricciosa! This pizza is absolute madness. The pizza is made in the basement of the place, in an open kitchen by Marco, an Italian who may serve you a Nutella calzone for dessert. Madness!
The menu includes both pizzas rosse and bianche including a tempting Patate with fior di latte, potatoes, cacao cavallo and pancetta. Pizzas cost between PLN 20 and 38.
2) Ciao a Tutti – al. Niepodległości 217
An inconspicuous and small Ciao a Tutti is hidden in a place where not many people go for walks. But if you look around closely while crossing from Niepodległości street to into Wawelska you will notice an entrance to a small Italian paradise. An almost homespun vibe with charming black and red checquered tablecloths. PIZZA rules on their menu. Without question. There’s no pastas or main courses. Pizza, salad, dessert. And that’s enough when you’re serving pizza as good as here! When you eat it, your thoughts drift towards Italy! Try salsiccia e spinaci for instance – with Italian sausage and spinach! Pizzas cost between PLN 16 and 28. There’s 31 to choose from.
3) Mąka i Woda – ul. Chmielna 13 A
I bet that’s the most controversial place on our list!:) I get the feeling that you either love or hate Mąka i Woda. You’re either a sworn opponent or you recommend it to anyone. What’s funny is the fact that we’ve done both;) In the beginning we weren’t amazed by Mąka and did not understand what do all these people see in it ???!!?? However after we checked it last summer for lunch, we couldn’t stop coming! We love it for the dough, for the sauce and various creative flavours – pizza with prunes, fresh figs and pancetta? There you o! Or mozzarella di bufala, fontal cheese, almonds, pancetta, chilli, pecorino romano, pears, maple syrup?? It’s there! Mąka is good at it! 🙂 The most attractive thing inside is the huge oven and pizza being made all the time –the heart of the restaurant!
PS. They do one o the best soups in town for lunches! PS2. If you’re thinking of looking in your eyes in peace and quiet on a Friday night, well think again! On Friday Mąka is like a beehive. Not only on Fridays to be honest!
4) Ave! Pizza – ul. Topiel 12 (Powiśle)
We only went to Ave! Pizza now even though we planned that for a while… however it never worked out for us before that. Famous, recommended and super popular. We had to check it out! A nice and casual place with tables put close to pizzaiolo so that you could peek on him all the time and see how your pizza is made. Menu includes 15 types of pizze rosse for PLN 20 – 38. If you’re looking for something spicy, go for Affumicata with mozzarella, provolone, spicy salami, mushrooms and speck. There are also pizze bianche (with mozzarella, no tomato sauce) – I was really tempted bu the one with cherry tomatoes, bresaola, black truffle cream, rucola and parmesan.
Ave Pizza firmly enter the group of best pizza places in Warsaw, but I have to admit we expected a little bit more!;)
5) Bella Napoli by Enzo Rossi – several places, i.e. Kondratowicza 18 (Bródno)
Bella Napoli is a classic everyone should know! Currently they already have a small Italian empire in Warsaw. Apart from the probably most popular place on ul. Kondratowicza in Bródko, their pizza is available on ul. Nałęczkowska 60, ul. Kolejowa 47 and ul. Kościuszki 38 in Marki. For us this place has its own special charm! An old man who welcomes the guest on ul. Kondratowicza with “Buon giorno! Per due? Prego!”, constant crowds and Italian pizzaiolo who make their pizza listening to Italian TV. We used to love to go here a few years ago, especially in the summer since the owners put the tables out on sunny days in order to serve all the customers! Right now the restaurant is a bit bigger and even though we didn’t like the food as we used to when we returned in November this place is still a legend of Warsaw’s pizza.
Pizzas cost between PLN 15 and 31. There’s 34 flavours and 3 Calzone to choose from. The flavours are rather classic. During our visits we usually had a pizza for starters and then took a pasta each 🙂
6) Non Solo Pizza – ul Grójecka 28 / 30 (Ochota)
EDIT: I found a picture of Non Solo buried somewhere deep in our Instagram 😉
What an irony: being a blogger, we were to this restaurant numerous times but have no photos! 😉 Non Solo is yet another classic. Know it? Non Solo and their sister place A Modo Mio bring many memories! I used to go there years ago with my mother, with friends and we at our first dinner with Łukasz in Warsaw there, quite accidentally. Over the years both places turned a bit towards mainstream and poor service, but their pizza is still good! 🙂 I love the spicy Lacrima. They also had their flagship NonSoloPizza with ham, mushrooms and garlic olive oil.
Pizzas cost between PLN 18 and 39. They also have pizza on wholemeal dough.
7) Heritage Shop & Wine – 3 places, i.e. Filtrowa 83 (Ochota)
Heritage Shop & Wine can be found in three different places in Warsaw on Plac Zbawiciela, ul. Solec 117 (near Tamka) and on ul. Filtrowa right next to Narutowicz square. It’s not a restaurant, more wine and Italian specialties shop. A kind of deli where you can by Italian cantucci cookies to go, coffee and olives, or even great fresh gnocchi! If you have a minute, stop for pizza too. It’s different than the others – oblong, served on a wooden board, very thin and crispy. A different category than Al Capone, Ciao a Tutti or Mąka i Woda but it’s tasty, cosy and charming. For the menu, best check their Facebook (Narutowicz – HERE!) since they don’t have a regular menu. There’s usually 1-2 pizzas available every day but you can also try their main courses if you lie… gnocchi with mascarpone and nuts or duck ravioli for instance. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? 🙂
8) L’Olivo – ul. Żelazna 59 A (Wola)
A candidate for the Restaurant of the Year 2015 title. The owners are a Polish-Italian married couple and a Tuscany native is cooking. The pastas in L’Olivo were pretty disappointing, but the pizza left such great memories that it’s worth remembering! It you like spicy food, go for pizza N’duja with Italian n’duja and spinata sausages, mozzarella and paprika (PLN 36) – a perfect choice. Typically Italian on a thin (but not too thin) dough with a lot of spicy sausage which makes it nicely hot on the tongue.
They also do both pizze rosse and bianche. Prices are between PLN 20 and 38. On their website you can read that in accordance with Italian culinary art, they don’t serve any extra sauces with the pizza – ‘Pizza in L’Olivo is complete. Like in any typical Italian ristorante we don’t serve it with extra sauces. If you still want to pour something over it, we suggest our olive oil and a glass of good wine.’ Big up for this!
9) La Bottega Toscana – ul. Cybernetyki 3 (near Mordor;))
La Bottega Toscana closes our list! The owner and chef of this little restaurant near Galeria Mokotów was born in Tuscany and as soon as you enter, you’ll notice Juventus shawl. We loved Bottega pizza with bresaola and gorgonzola (perfect combination!) and Rustica (with rucola, parmesan and Parma ham). Tasty dough, however a bit to dry compared with our top 3… a decent sauce, plenty of good quality toppings. You can come with children, no problem since there’s a kids’ corner available (small, but with many toys). Ask if they’re still doing pizza making workshops for children on weekends – I know that they used to.
While preparing this entry, we considered other restaurants and pizzerias too. Some of the ones you generously names under out Facebook post (thank! You’re great! We can eat pizza for a year now and we got a good excuse for it!) and some which we heard about. In the last 2 days we had pizza in 5 different places in order to expand our knowledge about Warsaw’s pizzas. Quite a lot 😉 There’s a lot more places to see before we do our second edition, but we decided to close this list with 9 names. Here are some places we know or have tested where the pizza is not worth coming back for in our opinion:
-Il Caminetto (dry sides, almost no cheese, no pleasure in eating, also really poor salsicca ravioli)
-Pizza na Barskiej (definitely a Polish version of Italian pizza and we prefer he original. The dough was sweetish and served with a huge jar of oregano sauce. I ‘Polish pizza’ category it’s a strong contender, but it’s no match for an Italian one)
-La Mia Italia on ul. Domaniewska (a tasty pizza but disappointing toppings – the mozzarella di bufala turned out to be an ordinary mozzarella in German packaging)
– Mamma Marietta (we really like the place and their pastas but their pizza is nothing special – we wrote about them twice – HERE and HERE)
-Pizza 360 (good pizza, pleasant place, but nothing special: reviewHERE)
– Spacca Napoli (a tasty pizza but again, nothing special compared with others, both in terms of flavour, dough, memories. Apart from that we really didn’t like their stiff ravioli – review HERE)
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