Crazy Pizza is an upscale pizzeria from Italian entrepreneur and ex-Formula One boss Flavio Briatore. The original site is in Porto Cervo, and there’s a sibling in Monte Carlo too, but the London outpost is found in Marylebone.
The dining room is smart and stylish, decked out in rich tones including crimson red walls and cosy bottle green banquettes. There are touches of playfulness too though, befitting the restaurant’s moniker – note the oversized red teddy bears that occupy some of the seats, and the black and white portraits of famous faces tucking into slices of pizza, spanning Kylie Jenner to Barack Obama, which line the walls. The partially open kitchen towards the back of the dining room also provides some theatre, thanks to chefs spinning pizza bases using the sorts of tricks that you might be more used to seeing on a basketball court.
Crazy Pizza’s focused menu is split between salads and pizzas, as well as a section dedicated to mozzarella served in different portion sizes. To kick-start our meal, we enjoyed a helping of the thick and creamy mozzarella along with a vibrant Malindi salad, which was essentially a pimped-up prawn cocktail; a bed of lettuce was topped with plump prawns, smooth slices of avocado, a mound of sweet crab meat and lashings of Marie Rose sauce.
The pizzas at the restaurant are split between ‘classic’ and ‘crazy’, although the latter’s combinations aren’t exactly shocking – tomato sauce with buffalo mozzarella and Iberico ham for example. We chose a pizza from each section, picking the Formaggi from the classics and the Tartufo from the crazies.
Our Formaggi was a rich medley of homemade mozzarella, Gorgonzola and Grana Padano that had all melted into the base, while the Tartufo is an exercise in unadulterated luxury, arriving at the table crowned with a snowdrift of black truffle shavings. Crazy Pizza sets itself apart from most other pizzerias with its impossibly thin bases, which are crisp and pleasingly light. The reason for this is that the kitchen forgoes using yeast in its dough, resulting in a pizza base that’s far less stodgy than the typical offering.
Punchy prices (that truffle pizza will set you back an eye-watering £45) and overly keen service could detract from the experience, but the novelty of leaving a pizzeria without feeling bloated is reason enough to visit.