La Gatta

La Gatta Pizzeria Napoletana – the very name sends shivers down one’s spine with its inimitably Italianate cadence. And the thought of pizza. Proper pizza pies the way the folks in Naples do it. It seems these folks in Fulham do it to, under the guidance of Luca La Gatta, an experienced London restaurateur and Neapolitan gourmet who’s determined to raise the bar when it comes to Italian cuisine in this part of the capital. Luca waxes lyrical about the ‘liturgical’ practice of sitting down before a sumptuous spread with friends and family, and certainly his New Kings Road pizzeria is a chapel for such devotion. He even makes it easy for kids to tuck in – as if kids had to be bribed to eat pizza – by offering them his gourmet creations at half price. Grown-ups are advised to start with a tagliere di affettati misti or tagliere di verdure for two, before moving onto traditional brick oven-baked pizza or the lesser-known Napoli delicacy of pizza deep-fried.