There’s nothing like a birthday dinner at one of the city’s most hyped sourdough pizza joints to get us all salivating. Armed with party hats, bunting and cute table decorations that were later given a second – perhaps unexpected – life, as nipple tassels (don’t ask), the supper club crew descended on Gazzo in Neukölln, full of eager anticipation at the feast that was to come.
But before we’d even come within eyeshot of a menu, we were stopped in our tracks. Hordes of people crowded the pavement outside, waiting to be allotted their own slice of table. We were told it would take an hour, thankfully it was less, but we still recommend coming armed with a little patience; it’s not just the tables you end up waiting for here. (They could do with some extra staff, or perhaps a different system – the running of this place seemed a little chaotic at times.)
But let’s focus on the food. When it came to that, it really was party time. We ordered four pizzas to share between five of us. Quoting from the menu here (and not still drunk on Gazzo’s delicious cocktails, just following their numbering):
2. Tomato sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, olive oil, basil
3. Zucchini, feta, mozzarella, lemon, garlic
4. Portobello mushrooms, spinach sautéed in garlic and onion, pine nuts, herbs
7. Brandenburg buffalo mozzarella, tomato sauce, basil, olive oil
Your secret author here did her very best to gauge the group’s enthusiasm levels with every bite of these pizzas, and while of course there are nuances to our collective experience, we still came to a consensus: the zucchini won it, hands down, followed very closely by the spinach. The other two tomato-based pizzas were deemed by one of our number to be mutually indiscernible, and somehow too familiar to what she’d eaten before to have a wow factor. If we were to be objective about this and not at all influenced by the hype (of course impossible), I personally would say all four were tasty, but not mind-blowing.
As for dessert…often with pizza places it’s the most disappointing course, a pre-made – or even worse, pre-bought – tiramisu plonked down gracelessly as a goodbye. But at Gazzo, it’s a different story. The ice cream drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt is genuinely divine, even if our bunch did deem the shortbread chunks a little too big. We resolved to try the plum ice cream on our next visit, for this was surely not to be our last.
