Review at a glance: ★★★☆☆
The Americans are coming? No chance — they’re already here, in football boardrooms and West End dressing rooms, clogging up the Cotswolds. What’s that in the hedgerow? Only the CIA, dear.
As this paper reported a fortnight ago, there are a record number of Yanks in the capital and London’s restaurateurs — most not uncoincidentally in need of serious cash injections — have taken note. These people must be fed and watered, indulged in a taste of home. They need to know there’s culinary life beyond the Hard Rock Cafe.
Londoners, too, want a bite of the apple pie, given most of us are now prohibited from a jolly across the pond thanks to the vertiginous stateside cost of living. Funny that under a president famous for building skyscrapers, everything should be going up, up, up.
But London provides, and the American fix is easy to get in all its forms. There’s The Dover, somewhere for a New York night with jazz club lighting. Or try Passyunk Avenue, a trash palace with sports bar proportions and Philly cheese steaks. Most notable of all has been the wave of New York-style pizzerias: Vincenzo’s, Gracey’s, Alby’s. You thought Neapolitan was the star of the show? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Paulie’s follows the pattern. I like the name, with its Goodfellas nod. Owner Ryan O’Flynn’s other gaff is Detroit Pizza, famous for… well, even JD Vance’s new pal David Lammy might get that one, which is quite something given on Mastermind he suggested Henry VII succeeded Henry VIII.
O’Flynn (Canadian, shush) has not gone far: Paulie’s is just down the road from Detroit. Paulie’s thing is slices of NYC pizza for about a fiver. Less than: the menu gets going at £4.50 for a slice of “Tomato” — mato, not marto — where, on the Paulie’s base, as crisp and thick as a stack of fresh dollar bills, comes “red sauce”, pecorino, oregano.
For an extra 50p, have the Classic NYC, the same as above with bonus mozzarella. The two cheeses play nicely: the cream of the mozzarella, the salt of the pecorino. That red sauce has a tang of sugar to it. Here is New York pizza in its traditional guise: the base is sturdier than that of its Italian forefathers, chewier too. More gluten. Each bite demands two sips of full-fat Coke. It tells of the place it was born from: it has been engineered to be folded and eaten on the go, for a city that is always on the move.
There is something cheerfully insouciant about Paulie’s, like it too is always on the move and doesn’t have time for any Limey bullshit. Toppings are somewhat scattershot, as if tossed on while simultaneously hailing a cab — discs of pepperoni huddled like hoodlums at one end of the slice, leaving the rest of it bare. It is a fault easily rectified. There seemed more care with the vodka and sausage slice, which takes the late 1970s Italian-American favourite of vodka sauce — the booze may taste of nothing but it draws out sweetness from tomatoes, or at least I like to believe it does — and mixes it with pancetta, gently herby Italian sausage and that mozzarella/pecorino combo. This is something to schlep for. That vodka-induced sweetness hit like a sugar fix. I went to the counter and ordered another. On the move? We stayed put.
Discs of pepperoni huddled like hoodlums at one end of the slice, leaving the rest of it bare
It’s easy to want to stay. Paulie’s looks good with white-washed brick walls and safety-orange tabletops. It feels good, with its soundtrack of Kurtis Blow and the Beastie Boys, its paper plates and soft-serve ice cream for pud. Avoid the £4 cookies — an accompanying glass of milk is £3.99, which should be illegal. Other things to grumble about do present themselves: don’t risk the buffalo wings, eerily the same colour as the tabletops, which probably taste better. I’m not sure it is quite as cheap as it seems, either — egalitarian Icco does an entire pizza for £3.95.
Nearby tables gurgled merrily about New York pizzerias, about coming back here. Perhaps now is the time to tell you I don’t particularly like NY-style pizza, and can’t much differentiate it from the hard-bottomed oven jobbies we had growing up. Maybe that makes me a putz. But for those that do like it, Paulie’s is a specialist with its execution about on-point. Capiche?
Meal for two about £30; paulieslondon.com
