Oi Vita Pizzeria — Restaurant in London

I went here to meet a friend for dinner with my 14 month old. We’d booked for 6.30pm but had to shift our booking to 7pm as my friend was running late. I’d tried to go here about 6 months earlier but they weren’t open for lunch.

According to my friend, they’d won a pizza festival (who even knew such things existed!) so we had high expectations! Knowing we had a little one with us, they’d set up our table with a high chair which was much appreciated. The menu has a lot of choice but we ended up choosing a couple of pizzas to share from their specials which changes every couple of months I believe.

We chose the garlic bread to start with (it’s vegan which is fab because my little one has a dairy allergy), plus two pizzas from the specials. One had a butternut squash base with goats cheese, tomato and basil, and the other had a garlicky green base with mozzarella, tomato and olives. I was happy to let my friend choose and while I wouldn’t have gone for the butternut squash one myself, it was delicious. They both were. Bases are thin and flavours are fresh and interesting. Couldn’t get enough of the crust dipping sauces - we went for the cheesy one and the garlic truffle Mayo. A lot of garlic was consumed that night!

The homemade limonata was refreshing and just sweet enough - I’m not a fan of really sugary drinks so this was perfect.

It took a while for our pizzas to arrive - but this was down to a lack of us realising that they were waiting for us to finish the garlic bread first (we were saving space for the main event!) We were also told in a very reasonable way that they needed our table and our booking was for a certain time only. The place is small and was quite quiet when we arrived but was definitely buzzing by the time we left.

It’s the small touches which really make a place and I loved that because they knew we were sharing the pizzas, they’d already halved them for us and plated them up.

Had a lovely meal and was pleased to have tried the food finally! Now I just need to go back...

We used to come here before lockdown and the owner was always nice because we always asked for a fried pizza (they don't have it in the menu) and they always made it for us.

This time was different.

We asked one of the waiters if we could have 2 fried pizzas as a starter, he said no problem (for the way that I acted he understood that it was done before), took the rest of order and left our table.

I told another staff member that I forgot to say that I wanted salami into the 2 fried pizzas. He replied "we don't do fried pizza", we thought he was joking. He then left our table and went on changing our order with the other waiter, we thought he was just amending the order to include the salami.

Later, when the "fried' pizzas arrived, they were oven cooked instead of fried. When I pointed out to that we asked for the pizzas to be fried he went on pretending we were making fun of him and the pizzas were never meant to be fried.

We understand a restaurant might not be happy to make an item that is not included in the menu but we do not accept the fact he modified the order without telling us for then pretending we got confused. Of course they made us pay for it (if we knew that the pizzas were going to be oven cooked we would have ordered something else).

You lost 4 very good customers (as you already know if you look at the bill).

In the end they offered us 4 limoncello (it was the minimum, it is actually standard for an Italian restaurant to offer a digestive), we paid and went away. After 2 minutes we remembered about the £40 we paid to book the table. They never took them off the bill! We had to go back to remember them.

Pizza is good but it is quite similar to many other restaurants here in London (I am Neapolitan and have tried several). If you also care about the service and the fried pizza, find...

If there were 6 stars for service, I would rate this.

Teeny tiny restaurant with limited seating. We were unintentionally half an hour early (were collecting something from London that evening all the way from Cambridge so thought we would stop somewhere for dinner before heading home). We managed to squeeze into the tiny waiting area and got a homemade limonata with fresh mint while we waited.

We were seated at the bar as the tables were full but it had a pleasant view of the pizza oven and was close to the waitresses so we had first dibbs on any requests.

For dinner we had the rocket salad, truffle pizza and the siciliano between my husband and i. The food was chefs kiss. The toilet was super clean and tidy (VERY unusual for a small London restaurant) and the staff - Ah-mayzing.

Everyone was super attentive and friendly, making our experience even more enjoyable (as a foodie, a good atmosphere and vibe always makes the food taste even better). It felt like we were at a friend's house meeting and chatting to their family who fed us delicious food and made great recommendations (like not using any chilli oil on the truffle pizza to enjoy the truffle more and making dessert suggestions that were spot on).

Only suggestion is to upgrade the coffee machine (and coffee). But a 10/10 experience and would recommend this place to anyone - lovely to support a family owned (non-corporate) business! ❤️

Thank you to the lovely staff for a memorable and...