What in heaven’s name is a Swedish pizza? I’d not heard of it until about a month ago and I count myself as something of a pizza connoisseur, at least when it comes to pizza in London. I’m writing a book about the city’s burgeoning scene and I’m also a judge at a pizza competition at The Orange in Pimlico.
Swedish pizza has nothing to do with Ikea, a little sadly, because really the company is my only point of cultural reference. I’m not fussed about elk or rye bread; I visited Punk Royale - born out of Stockholm - once before and enjoyed it, but haven’t ever journeyed to Frantzen, Signum or VYN. In fact, the furniture chain should probably get in the game. The UK’s pizza market is booming, projected to surge from £6.05bn to £8.54bn in the next 12 months, and the sector is awash with new pizzerias, usually New York in style but not always. Greggs even built an entire multi-million-pound factory in 2024 to cater for Britain’s insatiable demand for slices. Ikea can sell all the meatballs and flimsy hotdogs it likes in its new restaurants but eventually it’ll have to serve pizza. Swedish pizza, I’d suggest.
For now, to get your Swedish pizza fix you’ll have to venture to Hammersmith, home to Swede Stop. Opened by Mohammed and Firas Jawad late last year - two clearly enterprising new restaurateurs who saw a gap in London’s increasingly saturated market - the restaurant looks much like a dainty Ikea in that its colour scheme is blue and yellow. Its design is simple, clinical and canteen-like, bright and sans art. The only decoration of note is a brick oven in a small open kitchen at the back.
Pizza has long been in situ in Sweden, at least in cities such as Stockholm and Malmo. Yet the variety served here arrived with waves of immigration in the 1980s, imported and delivered largely by Turkish immigrants and influenced by diasporas from Iraq, Somalia, and Iran (Kurds mostly). Cooks from the Middle East and Balkans sought hospitality jobs in Swedish pizzerias and started experimenting, adding flavours and techniques beyond the simple notion of cheese and tomato on dough.
There hasn’t been anything truly novel in London’s food scene for some time, and this really is that
And so arrived a new style of what is probably the world’s most famous dish, one that has been plagiarized, adapted, adored, (and sometimes) improved. Swede Stop’s flagship dish is the ‘kebabpizza’, where ribbons of tumbling doner meat arrive among lettuce, tomato, red onion and chilli peppers, the ingredients enlivened by swirls of hot and tangy sauce. A kebab, then, but served on a pizza base, which is thin, crisp and baked at a high temperature. And it can also be topped with chips.
Swede Stop also serves a meatball pizza, where miniature spheres of unidentifiable meat are married to peppers and mushrooms. There’s a shawarma chicken option, so too one called the ‘Tuna-liscious’, which blends flakes of canned tuna meat with onions and jalapenos. Sure, it’s enough to cause Italy to combust or start a war, but this is London. Although my eyebrows raise when I consider the ‘Afrikana’, which comes with curry chicken, slices of banana and peanuts. I won’t be ordering that even on the most righteous of hangovers.
There hasn’t been anything truly novel in London’s food scene for some time, and this really is that. The dough is decent, the cooking sound, and sharing the OG - kebabpizza - with a classic side of shaved white cabbage with oregano would make for a gentle foray into mad Scandi dining.
You can’t move for Neapolitan in 2026; New York-inspired joints are proliferating at an alarming rate; Roman and various other styles could do with a greater showing but they’re hardly lacking either. Maybe it’s time for Swedish?