Went with high expectations to Peppe as it was highly recommended by friends of us. As a Neapolitan style pizza lovers, we were looking forward to this place.

It started off great. With a friendly reception, good atmosphere and overall good ambiance. Nice open kitchen where you can look straight into the fire. A gass oven unfortunately but that doesn’t mean anything.

Our orders were quickly taken and drinks came fast with a smile. Very surprising given the fact that the restaurant was packed with people and food was going out the kitchen fast, really fast and maybe too fast?

We’ve ordered two pizza (one being the Marinara 2.0 and one original combination of potatoes, some tuna and tomato sauce) and a portion of arancini balls to share. Quality of the ingredients were top notch. The tomato sauce was fragrant, the toppings were of high quality and the filling of the balls were top-notch. They came out looking great and we were excited!

Unfortunately, they messed up the basics. The dough was undercooked like really undercooked. Opening the crust, you could feel raw dough. I know Neapolitan is not a crunchy pizza bottom. It supposed to be floppy, that’s how I like it but the base couldn’t hold the pizza at all. It was to be expected of my original creation pizza as it had a lot of toppings (so I could slightly forgive it for that as this was my own choice) but the Marinara with only tomato sauce as a wet base and some stracciatella this is unforgivable. The sauce was great on it self but they’ve added too much as a result making for very soggy dough. Looking around you could see many people were leaving their crust. I can’t believe that they were all only eating the inside of the pizza and were no crust people 😀

The same goes for the arancini balls. Filling good but crust was not crispy at all. Chewy outside which was disappointing.

With high volumes, there comes a trade-off if not dealt properly. A Neapolitan pizza cooks fast (90sec) at the right oven temperature. When your oven is working overtime then you should adjust the time in the oven accordingly. Temperatures drop when using the oven too much. Same goes for the fryer. Too low temperatures result in not the best result. That in combination with what I suspect a too much hydration dough makes for a very sloppy pizza prone to be undercooked. A shame as they have won in the past pizza competitions, I think today they are a bit the victim of their success.

We’ve pointed it out to the waiter and, as expected, the first reaction was maybe it’s the mozzarella. A reaction to be expected but there is a difference between mozzarella and rough dough. They would take it up with the kitchen. And that was that. Another guy just brought the bill and we paid and left.

So it’s for that reason I think the 3* is deserved. Great ambiance and great staff but let down by the kitchen. Start with fixing the basics, keep the same high level quality of ingredients as you have today and together with your great staff you can reclaim your place at the top of the Parisian Pizza game!