Here’s Why I Don’t Get The Hype Around Ria’s Pizza
Here’s Why I Don’t Get The Hype Around Ria’s Pizza
Ria’s pizza in Notting Hill has the cheese pulls and the halal pepperoni, but it still falls flat
I’ve been putting off writing about Ria’s pizza, which probably tells you most of what you need to know.
Usually, even when a meal is less than brilliant, there’s a hook I can grab onto. Something memorable, good or bad, that makes the review sharpen in my head on the way home.
With Ria’s, the feeling is flatter than that.
I leave Notting Hill mostly wondering whether we’d caught Ria’s on a bad day, ordered badly, visited the wrong branch, or been tricked by the combination of good PR, photogenic pizza and influencer hype.
Because on paper, I should like this restaurant, with its Detroit-style pizza and Halal pepperoni available as a substitute. Fried potatoes with whipped feta – yum. It all sounds exactly like the kind of excessive lunch I would normally defend with my whole chest.
And yet, while the potatoes are indeed fantastic, the pizza is not. Here’s why.
Quick info on Ria’s pizza in Notting Hill
- Restaurant: Ria’s
- Cuisine: Detroit-style pizza and small plates
- Must order: Fried potatoes with garlic whipped feta
- Skip: Pizza
- Halal: Halal pepperoni available as a substitute
- Better restaurant for Detroit pizza: Detroit Pizza London
- Better restaurant for halal pepperoni pizza: Crisp W1
- Would I go back? For the pizza, no.
- Details: Party of 4 plus a child. Meal paid for by us independently
Find out more in the full Ria’s pizza restaurant review below.
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The Ria’s menu is short, but the slices are not
The Ria’s menu is built around Detroit-style pizza, served either by the slice or as a whole pie, with a handful of small plates and desserts around it.
Detroit pizza should be a beautiful thing when it works: thick, yes, but airy. Crisp at the edges and fluffy in the middle: the sort of base that eats like a very good focaccia that you’d want to eat on its own.
Ria’s also gets a point for offering halal pepperoni as a substitute, which means both the Pepperoni pizza and Dave’s Hot Pep become options if you don’t eat pork. That’s a thoughtful touch, and I wish more pizza places would do it.
Sadly, useful menu flexibility can only carry a pizza so far.
The fried potatoes are the clear winner
The fried potatoes with garlic-infused whipped feta are easily the best thing we eat at Ria’s in Notting Hill.
They arrive golden, craggy and crunchy, almost brittle, with the right structure to scoop up that whipped feta. Which is, of course, exactly what you should do.
The feta is rich, salty and creamy, with an addictive garlicky hum running through it. The potatoes become less side dish and more edible shovel. There’s crunch, fat, salt – all the good things.
If the rest of the meal had this much pull, I’d understand the hype completely.
The House slice pizza has no real spark
We order a single slice of The House pizza for our four year old because, on the menu, it looks closest to a Margherita, which is usually the safest route through the small-child restaurant minefield.
It comes with slow-cooked house marinara, cheese, ricotta drizzle, basil and lemon sauce.
Unfortunately, that bright green basil sauce is also exactly the kind of visual disturbance capable of derailing a child’s entire lunch, so I scrape it off at speed before anyone starts asking difficult questions.
I do taste it first – it’s alright.
But there’s no real excitement there. The base is thick and somewhat dry, without the bounce or softness I’m hoping for. More importantly, the toppings never really become part of it. They sit on top of this enormous wedge of bread rather than sinking in, soaking through or making the whole thing taste better.
My daughter peels the cheese off the top and eats that. She may have understood the assignment better than the rest of us.
Dave’s Hot Pep makes me tired of hot honey
Dave’s Hot Pep comes loaded with red sauce, cheese, cupping pepperoni, Calabrian chillies, pickled jalapenos, stracciatella, hot honey, grana padano and oregano.
We swap in halal pepperoni, which I appreciate.
What I appreciate less is the ongoing national emergency of hot honey on every pepperoni pizza. I know it’s meant to work, but it just adds another tedious element to an already mundane pizza.
At Ria’s pizza, all the right ingredients appear to be present, but the eating is where it gets unstuck. The jalapenos bring heat, the pepperoni has that salt, the honey (supposedly) balances with sweetness. Still, the inescapable reality is that the base underneath is just a slog to get through.
It feels like hard work.
The full pepperoni pizza is where we make the biggest error
What we didn’t appreciate before ordering is that just a single slice at Ria’s is already a lot of pizza. A whole pie feels like a death sentence.
But, if it were delicious, it’d be fine.
Again, we swap in halal pepperoni, and again, I’m glad the option exists.
There’s plenty of cheese, plenty of pepperoni and the sort of dramatic cheese pull that looks excellent in a photo.
But a whole pizza exposes something a single slice can disguise: there just isn’t enough contrast to keep you interested.
One slice tastes much like the next. Cheese, pepperoni, bread. Cheese, pepperoni, bread.
Nobody is fighting for another slice. A whole pie feels like far too much of a pizza that I wasn’t desperate to finish one slice of.
The Zuzu makes a strong case against fruit on pizza
My husband orders a slice of The Zuzu, which could have been the most interesting pizza on the table with it’s bechamel, gorgonzola, blueberries, rocket, grana padano, honey (again!?) and cured lemon drizzle.
And I do get what they’re going for.
You can imagine the version where the gorgonzola brings funk, the bechamel keeps things creamy, the cured lemon cuts through the richness, and the blueberries bring a tartness to make the whole thing pop.
Sadly, that is not the version we eat at Ria’s pizza.
The blueberries are too sweet, so instead of giving the slice the sharp little burst it needs, they disappear into all the other richness and leave you wondering why there are blueberries on your pizza in the first place.
My husband remembers the whole thing as blah, which feels about right.
There are interesting ideas here, but none of them take charge. The cheese is rich, the fruit is sweet, the honey adds even more sweetness and the lemon doesn’t pull everything back into balance.
It isn’t offensively bad. It’s stranger than that: a pizza with lots to talk about and surprisingly little to remember.
The problem is the base
This is where Ria’s pizza falls down for me.
With Detroit-style pizza, the base has to be the thing that keeps you coming back. It can be thick, but it should still feel light. It should have crisp edges, a fluffy middle, and enough flavour to make the crust worth eating on its own.
At Detroit Pizza London in Spitalfields, that’s exactly what happens. The base is airy and focaccia-like, the toppings feel properly worked into the slice, and everything comes together.
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Why Detroit Pizza London Is Worth The Hype
In contrast, at Ria’s Notting Hill, the base feels dense, dry and markedly joyless. The toppings may be loud, they may look pretty, but they can’t rescue what’s underneath. You’re left with these enormous slices that eat like a chore.
And if a giant slice of pizza feels like homework, something’s gone wrong.
Ria’s halal options are useful, but not enough
It’s worth saying clearly that Ria’s halal pepperoni option is a good thing.
Being able to swap out the pork pepperoni makes the menu much easier to navigate, and I’m always happy to see restaurants making that sort of substitution available.
But a halal option still has to be delicious.
And for me, if I want halal pepperoni pizza, I’d rather go to Crisp W1 in Mayfair. Their base is thin, crisp and much more satisfying, and the halal beef pepperoni actually feels like part of a pizza I want to keep eating.
Ria’s pizza has the option. But the pizza at Crisp is what you’d actually want to eat.
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Hot Honey Halal Pepperoni at Crisp Pizza, Mayfair
Final thoughts on Ria’s pizza
I wanted Ria’s Notting Hill to be better.
The idea is good, and the potatoes are downright excellent. And I love that there’s a halal pepperoni option. The pizzas look the part, especially with such a dramatic cheese pull.
But eating here feels joyless.
And in London that’s a big problem.
There are too many good pizza places here for lunch to feel this forgettable. If I want Detroit-style pizza, I’m going to Detroit Pizza London. If I want halal pepperoni, I’m going to Crisp. If I want crunchy potatoes with whipped feta, fine, Ria’s can absolutely have that one.
But the hype around the pizza at this restaurant? Still baffling.
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Ria’s pizza restaurant review
Address – 29 All Saints Rd, London W11 1HE
Nearest Tube – Westbourne Park
