Dough Hands, E8
What's wrong with a little flop, anyway?
I’ve got a deep, dark secret I just can’t keep to myself any longer: I don’t get why London has suddenly gone nuts for thin, crisp East Coast-style pizza.
For a while we probably had a credible claim to being the best place in the world after Naples itself to eat the Neapolitan stuff, but instead we’re throwing it all away in a mad rush to copy what they do in New York — or, if you’re a real weirdo about it, New Haven.
Floppy dough is out and crispy crusts are in, and Dough Hands is one of the spots in London leading the charge. Based out of The Spurstowe Arms in Hackney — and, more recently, The Old Nun's Head near Peckham too — Dough Hands currently tops Time Out’s ranking of the best pizza in the city, above Hammersmith icon Crisp (haven’t been, I know I should) and delivery behemoth Yard Sale (have eaten more than I feel comfortable admitting).
At the risk of sounding unkind: it’s not that good. By which I mean it’s not “best in the city” good, but it is one of the better places around imitating that East Coast style.
I paid a visit to The Spurstowe Arms to give Dough Hands a go, and it’s got the location going for it. Dimly lit and buzzy on a weekday night, the place was packed and lively. The beer selection is decent if a little unremarkable, and I could see myself drinking here on the regular if I lived nearby. A lot of pubs in London do pizza these days (and even more fudge it by letting Yard Sale deliver) but The Spurstowe seems like one of the good ones.
From the menu alone, there’s not much to distinguish Dough Hands from the legions of other London pizzerias that have opened over the last few years. The pizzas are laid out in a chunky font with bright colours, illustrated with cartoon characters. There’s garlic bread and a spread of crust drips to go alongside, led by a Domino’s-esque garlic & herb. There’s a pizza with hot honey on it, because apparently we’ve all forgotten that London has survived millennia without hot honey pizza and can do so again, I promise, let’s just all try, please.
Pizzas range from £9 to £16 for 12-inch personal numbers, and are served thin and cooked to a crunch. Pizza preference is deeply personal, and in case you can’t tell this isn’t mine — but for what it’s worth I think Dough Hands does a good job with the style. One of our six orders did come out with a crust closer to charcoal than anything else, which I think might be pushing things just a little far, but the rest walked the line of being brittle but not burnt.
The challenge with the thin and crispy style is that the base itself tends to fade into the background. It’s cooked too hard to taste of much, so it delivers only a textural note, and a simple one at that: so long as it holds firm in the middle and crunches at the crust, it’s done its job. That puts all the pressure on the toppings.
At times, I think that plays to Dough Hands’ strengths, especially if you’re willing to put a little trust in them and push the boat out. The best by far is the Shroomy 2.0: soy-roasted mushrooms, taleggio, and tarragon on a tomato and mozzarella base. It offers infinite umami and a brilliant balance of all those flavours, which is no mean feat. Almost as good is the Spicy Tuna, where spicy tuna is accompanied by red onion, grana padano, and a splash of lemon to brighten it up. Tuna on pizza usually sucks; this one really, really doesn’t.
The problem is that beyond those two, things get boring fast. The base doesn’t have enough going on to make the Margherita a compelling proposition, and I’m sure the vegan Tomato Pie has even less appeal, while the pepperoni and jalapeño-topped OG is good but generic. The Jode is the requisite hot honey number, here combined with nduja and stracciatella. I don’t think every pizzeria needs to push the boat out on toppings — in fact I wish more of them would row it back — but Dough Hands' best pizzas are also its most inventive, and I wish it would lean into that more.
If you’re fed up with Neapolitan flop then you might get more joy from Dough Hands than I did — clearly a lot of people out there have. For my money I think St. Albans’ Gracey’s is a tier above when it comes to the crispy East Coast stuff, but you clearly shouldn’t take my word for it: I spent a week eating my way around New York and complaining that the pizza was rubbish.
Mostly I suppose I should just be glad that London is embracing a few new styles. If all this quasi-New Haven nonsense is the price I have to pay for a Detroit Pizza on every high street, then so be it.