Pizza is generally a food that asks very little of its diners. It is familiar, comforting and, depending on the pizzeria, something to eat quickly and without too much thought. So, when I heard Napoli on the Road was launching a tasting menu, I was rather sceptical about how pizza would fit into the format.
The £65 menu, created by chef Michele Pascarella, was launched at the group’s recently opened Soho restaurant as an attempt to reframe the modern pizzeria. However, the menu is not, Pascarella is keen to stress, an attempt to turn pizza into fine dining. Instead, it is an exploration of the format through ingredients, seasonality, memories and flavours. And while there is inevitably something of a publicity exercise about launching a tasting menu alongside a new restaurant, I found it an interesting way of testing how far pizza can be pushed before it stops feeling like pizza.
The meal begins with tomatoes, prepared in four different ways and cooked for two, six and 10 hours. It is an unconventional opening and initially felt slightly at odds with the straightforward pleasure I normally associate with a pizzeria. But that is arguably the point. The tomatoes give you something to think about before the dough arrives, demonstrating how much variation can be extracted from a single ingredient. These tomatoes quickly became one of the focal points of the meal, prompting plenty of conversation not just around the table but long after the meal was over.
Fritti follow, consisting of fried polenta, zucchini frittatina and a potato crocchè. all of which were perfectly enjoyable but felt less integral to the experience than what followed. While the plates were happily emptied, I doubt their absence would have been keenly felt.
The first pizza is the Artichoke Squared, topped with an artichoke cream base, crispy violet artichokes and hazelnuts. It is an interesting early indication of how far the menu intends to move away from the familiar, using the artichoke in several forms.
Then comes the margherita, although calling it simply that perhaps undersells what is going on. The barley and rye base is fried before being baked, then topped with slow-cooked datterino tomato, Piennolo tomato jam, buffalo mozzarella and wild garlic pesto.
As the menu progresses, each pizza feels sufficiently different from the last to avoid becoming an extended exercise in toppings. I was pleased to see a well-timed break from the procession of dough in the form of barattiere, an Apulian cucumber served with citrus and verbena. This was then followed by a reinterpretation of vitello tonnato served in sandwich form with tuna sauce, veal breast and caper leaves.
Then comes Ricordi d’Infanzia – ‘Memories of Childhood’ – inspired by Pascarella’s family cooking. It is also the restaurant’s biggest claim to fame, having been crowned the World’s Best Pizza in 2025.
The topping is certainly not short on meat: 10-hour slow-cooked beef rib, shin and oxtail alongside pork ribs. On paper, it sounds like an overdose of richness, but the finished dish is more balanced than the ingredient list might suggest, with the different elements working well together and making for a fitting finale.
There is a temptation, when a chef takes a familiar dish and applies more elaborate techniques to it, to assume the result must be better. Yet pizza has survived and thrived precisely because of its relative simplicity, and there is a danger in overthinking something that does not necessarily need fixing. Napoli on the Road’s tasting menu largely avoids that trap because it is less interested in improving pizza than exploring it.
Pascarella says the intention is to “tell a story made of memories, seasonality, ingredients and flavours rather than demonstrate technique for its own sake”. Having worked my way through the menu, that comes across. It works better as an exploration of pizza than an attempt to redefine everyday dining.
The sorbet provides a natural point of conclusion, followed by a selection of Italian-pastry-inspired dolci, including a ricotta cream tartlet, zuppetta diplomatica and a miniature dark chocolate and hazelnut ice-cream bar. Like the fritti at the beginning, they provide punctuation to the meal without playing a crucial role.
There is the obvious question: who is this menu actually for? It is not aimed at the diner looking for a quick margherita, nor is it likely to become the sort of weekly ritual that makes a pizzeria commercially appealing in the first place. At £65 before drinks, it is also asking customers to approach pizza as an occasion rather than a casual meal.
But the tasting menu does not need to become a core proposition of the pizzeria to have value. For a new restaurant, it creates a talking point. For the chef, it provides a platform to experiment. And for diners, it offers a unique experience and a chance to see whether a food they thought they knew can still surprise them.
Ultimately, the concept demonstrates that there is room between the humble margherita and fine dining for something a little more exploratory.