The £16 pizza was named the third best in the world
Britain’s best pizza has been named, and you can try it now in two East London pubs. Ugo Galleli’s Short Road Marinara was recently crowned the country’s top pizza – and the third best in the world, thanks to his 48-hour cold fermented dough.
The 14-inch, £16 creation triumphed over rivals from across the globe including Naples, the birthplace of the modern pizza. TimeOut Magazine judges lauded Ugo’s dough and positioned it behind just two establishments – in New York and Rome.
Ugo, who serves his pizzas from two London pubs, said: “I couldn’t even believe the TimeOut article. I thought it was a joke. A judge said what stood out for them about our pizza is the unique dough structure, which is light and fragrant but also thin and crispy.”
Ugo, 39, established Short Road Pizza (SRP) in 2020, delivering pizzas to his neighbours every Sunday after posting a menu through their letterboxes. After resuming his career in advertising following the pandemic, his pizza ambitions were shelved until 2024, when the SRP brand secured a permanent site at The Three Colts Tavern in Bethnal Green, East London.
Currently, operating from that pub alongside the William the Fourth pub in Leyton, SRP’s standing is swiftly growing an international reputation.
The TimeOut recognition arrived shortly after the same Marinara pizza was declared National Pizza of the Year at the National Pizza Awards – surpassing household names such as Franco Manca to claim two awards in total. Despite the business’s modest origins, Ugo is now setting his sights on launching a dedicated restaurant for SRP, which takes its name from his street in Leytonstone, East London.
Ugo recalled that, when the pandemic struck in 2020, he and his illustrator wife Kate Prior, 38, were motivated to make pizzas in his pizza oven for their new neighbours. Ugo said: “I wanted to connect with my community through food. We created a flyer with Short Road Pizza on the front and the menu: marinara and margherita. The following Sunday, everyone ordered pizza. We became a massive community.”
With limited work available for his creative agency during lockdown, Ugo started exchanging ideas with his Grandad in Liguria, building his SRP brand alongside Kate’s illustrations. After lockdown restrictions eased, he commenced hosting pop-ups and catering for events, before returning to advertising in 2022.
However, Ugo found fresh inspiration following a Buddhist course, prompting him to resurrect his brand in 2024, and brewery Exale offered him the kitchen space at The Three Colts Tavern to work from. He said: “I had about a month to figure out how to run a restaurant and three days to make it ours. The first few days were very hectic. We were working day and night, bashing out pizza after pizza. The whole of Short Road came to Bethnal Green for the opening. We just kept going from there. We haven’t had a bad day since.”
SRP’s unique fusion of Romana and New York-style pizzas is inspired by Ugo’s granddad’s ‘a bocca o forno’ – or mouth of the oven – method of cooking. His Neapolitan granddad, Luigi Giangreco, ran restaurant Don Luigi in Ugo’s hometown of Sestri Levante, which was the first eatery in Liguria to gain a Michelin Star in 1978.
Ugo said: “My grandad used to feed the family at the end of the shift. I was small, but I would go with mum and dad and we would sit around the table. The oven was dead; the pizza we would eat would be thin and crispy, cooked at a lower temperature for longer. I had always wanted to replicate that.”
Ugo says despite the ‘Tsunami’ of Neapolitan-style pizzas that took over London around 2010, he knew he wanted to do something different – blending his Neapolitan heritage with his passion for creativity.
He said: “I don’t mind Neapolitan style or New York style, but I don’t want Short Road to fit with the mould – it’s a style of our own. I am Italian, we have an Italian DNA, we bring the Italian roots and flavour. It’s a real mix. We wanted to bring classics with a twist.”
The SRP Marinara is Ugo’s take on his favourite pizza, featuring unusual ingredients such as Chimichurri, inspired by a close friend from Argentina, garlic confit purée, dried oregano, stracciatella from the inside of a burratta and Sicilian anchovies.
Apart from their tomatoes, which come from Italy, the majority of SRP’s ingredients are sourced locally – including the mozzarella, which is produced by an Italian resident in the UK.
On the very day SRP’s marinara was crowned the third finest in the world by TimeOut, following pizzas from New York and Rome, Ugo also welcomed his firstborn, Bruno.
He said: “We’re still massive underdogs, so The National Pizza Awards was incredible. There were 17 other pizza places – Franco Manca, Pizza Pilgrims, Zizi – so it was a very proud moment. We won two awards of the four on offer: the National Pizza Award and the award for the best Alternative Slice with our vegan Caramelle Piccanti pizza.”
He added: “With our marinara, we wanted to elevate it to give it the spot it deserves as a luxurious classic, on our very special 48-hour cold fermented biga dough. The spicy chimichurri elevates the tomato, and the fresh buttery burrata cuts through with the smoky soft garlic confit and the sharp salty Sicilian anchovies.”
Ugo reveals his grandfather Luigi took food so seriously that he would request to examine a fish’s eye at restaurants – claiming he could determine its freshness through his unusual technique. It is this multi-generational enthusiasm for cuisine within his family that motivated him to launch his own pizza venture, despite his own mother warning him against it.
However, despite SRP’s increasing fame, Ugo stated he would never wish for it to expand into a chain. “I grew up in restaurants with a strong passion for food, but I never worked in the hospitality industry. We definitely don’t want Short Road to be a chain, but we would like our own place. We want to keep that intimate, human feel.”
He added: “The secret to a good pizza is personal development and attachment to pizza. For every single person, pizza means a different thing. The secret is to follow what your heart says a pizza should be, instead of the trends. And not being afraid of being judged, pushing boundaries.”
Ugo continued: “I am all against traditionalists. I would happily put pineapple on a pizza if I found a reason for it. Otherwise, we would be doing the same pizza over and over again. You have to keep evolving.”
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