EAST WEST PIZZA IN LONDON
RECOMMENDED BY VIGNESH SANKAR:
I think we live in a time where everyone has become a bit of a taste police officer, myself included. Whether it's food, fashion or music, there always seems to be someone ready to tell you what the "right" version is. Authenticity has become a badge of honour, and sometimes I wonder if we've forgotten that food is also supposed to be joyful.
Maybe that's why one of my favourite places to eat in London at the moment is East West, an independently run pizza restaurant in Tufnell Park that does exactly what its name suggests: it brings together Indian and Italian flavours with absolutely no concern for whether the internet approves.
I imagine telling a traditional nonna from northern Italy about a samosa chaat pizza would probably send her into cardiac arrest. On paper, it really shouldn't work. And yet, somehow, it completely does.
It's built on a naan-like pizza base with a tangy tomato sauce, topped with pieces of Punjabi samosa, fior di latte mozzarella, pomegranate, sev, coriander and generous swirls of tamarind chutney. Every bite somehow manages to be crisp, spicy, sweet, creamy and tangy all at once.
I've probably ordered it four times since first trying it back in March, which says a lot because I rarely order the same thing twice.
The older I've become, the more I've realised that some of the most exciting food comes from people refusing to stay inside neat culinary borders. Diasporic food has always been inventive. It adapts, borrows, improvises and occasionally creates combinations that sound completely absurd until you taste them. It reminds me of the things my mum would throw together when I was growing up: cumin and garam masala stirred into a bolognese ragù, leftover curry tucked into a toastie. Nothing revolutionary, just the kind of cooking that quietly happens when two food cultures share the same kitchen.
That pizza reminds me that authenticity isn't always about preserving something exactly as it was. Sometimes authenticity is about reflecting the life you're actually living. A samosa chaat pizza probably shouldn't exist, but as someone who grew up moving between cultures, I'm very glad that it does.
For more RECS like this one, check out the rest of vol. 009:
