Operating out of an otherwise unremarkable old man’s pub in a sleepy London side street, Crisp Pizza W6 is the hottest place to eat in the capital. It achieved this status without fancy PR or newspaper reviews — and with a head chef who, until recently, had never cooked before. How has this happened? And what does it say about power and influence in today’s food scene?
Restaurant critics tell us where to eat. We, fellow humans not in possession of their credentials, palates or expense accounts, follow their recommendations. It’s a serious business. The most mythical and powerful critics will sometimes never reveal their faces, like spies, superheroes or internet trolls. They reserve their tables under noms de plume and put on wigs and fake glasses in the taxi on the way to dinner.
He poses an interesting, transgressive question. Who do we trust for our restaurant recommendations these days? Is it the writer for the august publication in a wig and glasses? Or is it some bloke in a Hawaiian shirt with gum on his shoe yelling at a passerby walking their pooch, “Hot dog! That dog had to be named Harold!”
“I was semi-pro for 10, 12 years,” says McCluskey. “And since this has happened, I regret that I didn’t have the passion and focus for football that I have with pizza. If I’d had that with the football, I probably could have played a lot higher. Only now I realise, you just need to work hard and focus on something and it’ll work out. And I didn’t. I was naturally quite gifted, and I’m quite tall. But yeah, just didn’t have that desire to do it.
On Thursday nights in the pub, from 6pm till 9pm, McCluskey would give pizzas away for free: “I was embarrassed to ask for money.” When that became the busiest night of the week, he started charging a fiver. “But the response was crazy,” says McCluskey. “People were just like: ‘These are really good. You should keep at it.’”Around this time, McCluskey made a breakthrough. He loved the ingredients from Naples, but he found Neapolitan-style pizzas too heavy.
“We were completely sold out,” says McCluskey. “And I had to offer some guy a round of drinks to get his pizzas. I said, ‘Look, I’m so sorry to do this but I’m going have to get one of your pizzas off you.’ But he was OK, though I didn’t tell him who it was for until he left, just in case.” But now, that’s history: people like Portnoy and the rapper Action Bronson, with his Viceland series and his book, have punctured the pomposity of food criticism. And how we eat has changed, too: we want familiar food, made with love and skill, that isn’t ruinously expensive. The trend started in earnest in lockdown and has only become more of an economic imperative.
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