Blink and you’ll miss it! Indeed, I had to ask a friend to explain where O’ver was, as even driving past each afternoon, I had not even noticed this new, bright and a little anonymous pizzeria that opened less than two months ago on Southwark Street. 

Combining the very best regional ingredients with traditional recipes, ‘O ver is the first restaurant in the UK to use the unique ingredient of Pure Sea Water.

Living near Waterloo, pizza and ice cream is something we usually have to travel for, lacking some good quality outlets of those staples of Italian food in the immediate vicinity. So obviously I was keen try O’ver having seen some very authentic looking pizza photos on Instagram. I love their logo (a lemon silhouette over the O), and the pun on the name which means something in English, and something completely different in Neapolitan. They use sea water in their dough, which is somehow an interesting alternative to Neapolitan water (said to be absolutely essential to good pizza and good coffee!). Better not to think about our poor, polluted Mediterranean!

We visited last saturday, arriving quite early at 7, to find the venue still half empty but was pretty full by the time we left. 

The menu reads proper: Starters and ‘Neapolitan street food selection’ include paste cresciute (fried batter balls, served as a complimentary nibble), arancini (rice balls), frittate di pasta and seasonal ricotta & salame filled courgette flowers, which we shared. These were good, albeit fried in a crunchy crust rather than the usual soft batter. 

What about the pizza?

We then both opted for pizzas. @bmcboy ordered a Paloma, with smoked mozzarella from Sorrento, rolled italian bacon made with pork belly, black pepper and fresh basil, asking to remove the chiodini mushrooms he can’t eat. His pizza was a touch underdone, and, in his words, too ‘flattened’. maybe it had not risen enough in the oven (which is wood fired), who knows, but he left feeling a little disappointed. 

My pizza however, was satisfying. I had the special, with provola, fried aubergines, fresh tomatoes and basil. I found it well cooked, and the dough was bouncy enough, as well as having good quality ingredients. I enjoyed it and was not feeling stuffy at all afterwards, which is usually a sign of a good rising in the dough (the opposite happened after I had a pizza at Franco Manca a few weeks ago, horrible).

We did not try anything else, sadly, especially desserts which also read as proper Campania delicacies (caprese, pastiera). Something for our next visit!

I do think O’ver is pretty good quality but given @bmcboy’s disappointment, we need to come back for a second tasting (any excuse).

Service is friendly, and quick. My only further comment would be on the price: £12 for my pizza, £15 for his, is a fairly steep price even for this area. Our total bill came to £46 including service. While pizza in Napoli is an every day occurrence, this would be more of a treat. 

Welcome to the neighborhood, O’ver!