Harper-Thames ventures beyond Shoreditch and finds that the original sourdough pizza chain remains the standard
Franco Manca Covent Garden: Why This Sourdough Pizza Chain Still Earns Its Reputation
There is a version of this review where I am sceptical about Franco Manca on the grounds that it has become a chain, and chains in the pizza space are usually the story of a brilliant original concept being stretched across too many sites until the quality dilutes to the point of irrelevance. I have been to enough Franco Manca locations to know that this has not happened here. The Covent Garden branch on Maiden Lane continues to produce the sourdough pizza that made the original Brixton location famous, and it continues to do so at prices that feel almost apologetically reasonable for central London.
The sourdough base is the reason everything works. It has the tang of a long fermentation, the chew of properly developed gluten, the char of a wood-fired oven that has been run at the correct temperature. These are not complicated things to describe but they are complicated things to achieve consistently across multiple sites, and Franco Manca achieves them consistently. The base is the same quality here as it is in the best of their other locations, which means it is significantly better than almost anything else available at this price point in this part of London.
The Menu Logic
The menu is deliberately short, which is the correct decision. A short menu in a pizza restaurant means the kitchen is making the things on it rather than buying in components for an extended range that no single kitchen could produce properly at volume. The house tomato sauce is made from San Marzano tomatoes and it tastes like it. The mozzarella has the texture and flavour of cheese rather than of a dairy product selected for melting properties alone. The cured meats are properly sourced and properly applied.
The number six pizza, which is the organic chorizo and mozzarella, is the one I order on most visits because it demonstrates the kitchen’s confidence in restraint. There are three toppings. They are applied in the correct quantities. The result is a pizza where every component is present in each bite without any one of them overwhelming the others. This is harder to achieve than it sounds and Franco Manca achieves it reliably.
The number one, the house tomato and mozzarella, is the pizza to order if you want to assess the kitchen honestly. There is nowhere to hide on a margherita. The sauce, the cheese, the base, and the bake are all visible and all assessable. Franco Manca’s version is very good: properly acidic sauce, cheese that pulls rather than slides, base that is charred without being bitter. It is the pizza that built the reputation and the reputation is deserved.
The Atmosphere and Value
The room is busy and casual in the way that a good pizzeria should be. There is noise and movement and the smell of a wood-fired oven in operation. The service is quick and friendly, oriented toward getting food to the table rather than performing a hospitality theatre. This is the right approach for this kind of restaurant. You come for the pizza, the pizza arrives, you eat it while it is hot. Simple pleasures, done properly.
The prices at Franco Manca remain one of the more remarkable things about the operation. In an area where the average main course runs to thirty pounds and above, a pizza at Franco Manca costs significantly less and is better than most of what you can eat at double the price in the immediate vicinity. This is either a business model that will eventually collapse under its own generosity or a deliberate positioning decision that has so far proved sustainable. Either way, the diner benefits.
Visit Franco Manca Covent Garden and order the number six. Then order the number one and compare. Then acknowledge that this is very good pizza at a price that makes no sense given the postcode. The London Prat has more on London dining. Bohiney Magazine has the cultural context.
SOURCE: http://www.francomanca.co.uk/restaurants/covent-garden/
