The Best Pizza in London - Oregano

I recently went to Oregano, one of my local Italian Pizzerias in Islington. Oregano is a small and unpretentious pizzeria, tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Upper Street on Alban?s Place, and is nearly always full with shoppers and locals.

Service can be erratic but friendly - waiters are young, notably inexperienced and very likely English language students.

On my latest visit, Dr G, Tea (my lovely Italian friend) and I were lucky to find a table available within a few minutes of getting there.

As I can?t be bothered making pizza at home I always order it at pizzerias. I love cooking and do it frequently at home but I also believe that certain foods rarely taste as good as those made in professional kitchens, like authentic Chinese food, dim sum and pizza.

Dr G ordered a ?Pizza Four Seasons? @ £8.95 (tomato, mozzarella, ham, olives, mushrooms, salami and artichokes), and was pleased to find his pizza base paper thin, and topped with a generous portion of cheese and accompanying ingredients.

Tea, as a good Italian, ordered the simplest of the pizzas ? ?Pizza Emilia? @ £8.45 (tomato, mozzarella, parma ham and rocket). She was pleased with her choice although the toppings were not nearly as abundant, and the pizzaiolo (the pizza chef) substituted basil for rocket.

The ?Pizza Amici? @ £8.95 (tomato, buffalo mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, parma ham and rocket) was also quite good. The base was indeed very thin, and I also felt that toppings were of an acceptable quality.

Since my visit to Pizza East last year (click for review), I started to enjoy a more substantial and chewy base, and the slight charring of the outside crust of my pizzas. I still enjoy having a thin base but this no longer holds such an attraction for me as it used to.

It is funny how some people get so obsessed about thin base pizzas, forgetting that the quality of toppings is just as important. There is nothing more vile in a pizza than tomato sauce which is not made on the premises (commercial tomato sauce tastes so terribly artificial), or worse, tinned tuna which smells just like cat food. Luckily, none of our pizzas suffered from these common faults.

The wine list was short and surprisingly expensive for what was on offer ? house wines started @ £13.50 per bottle with the next choices on the list jumping up to £16.90 (white) and £17.90 (red). Considering that many people would not order the house wine, I felt that the next available choices were a tad expensive.

The pizzas were about £2-£3 dearer than main competitors (La Porchetta or Stringray) but slightly cheaper than Pizza East where you would be expected to pay around £10 to £12 for a pizza.