Address: 20 Atlantic Road, SW9 8JA

Phone: 0207 738 3021

Website: https://www.francomanca.co.uk/restaurants/brixton/

Previous eat in review link – more than 10 years ago! Franco Manca has moved from its original small place that we often packed with a queue at weekends. It is now on Atlantic road in a big site that has seen several restaurants come and go. Brixton long-timers will know it as ‘The Railway’ or even as ‘Brady’s’. Inside it has a relatively small but bright room near the entrance with table and bar-type seating, but go up the stairs and on the left is a very large room that would be great for a pizza party – we noticed one going on when we visited.

We are very fond of Franca Manca, having been regular users back when it was Franco’s and only open during the day and then not on Wednesdays because of half-day closing! The current list of pizza’s has not been much revamped but changes with the seasons. They use sourdough with a starter they can trace to the 18th century – presumably via the original Franco. The dough is allowed to rise for 24 hours before they make the pizza then it is flashed in the incredibly hot oven for a really short time.

Of course there are pizza’s but there are also pre-pizza (olives, meat, salad stuff to share and small plates of aubergine parmigiana or cheesy stuff with meat). Salads to eat with or without a pizza – too many to describe and bread and dips. There is also post-pizza with affogato, tiramisu and other sweet treats. We were here for the pizza – was it as good as usual or was it becoming too speedy.

We chose a Napoletana and a spicy salami pizza (a sort of American hot).

The pizza below is the spicy salami one that had “lightly smoked beechwood spicy salami, organic tomato, mozzarella, caramelised red onions, homemade Franco’s chilli oil & fresh basil”. Not as hot as an American hot but the chili oil had a kick and the caramelised onions and cheese mellowed it all out.

The Napoletana had organic tomato, garlic, oregano, capers from Salina, Kalamata black olives, Cantabrian anchovies & mozzarella. This was delicious but a little more cooking would have made the dough even better.

We saw people taking pizza home but we finished the whole lot so had not space for post-pizza. We washed it all down with no logo craft lager and a glass of Montepulciana.

The bill came to £36.75 plus 10% service charge which is a lot less than most restaurants charge these days. The food only came to £22 so if you drink water this is a very reasonable place to eat. We were also full, so couldn’t squeeze in another bite. If you want to run through the menu then come with friends and only order a few pizzas so you can try the pre- and post-pizza specialties.