Thursday through Sunday, at 2pm on the dot, the pizza lovers of Bushey and beyond connect to storekit.com, the online pre-ordering platform used by Vincenzo’s. At 2:03pm, virtually all 200 of the 12-inch and 18-inch pies Tom Vincent will begin to bake a few hours later will have been sold and paid for.
In sleepy Hertfordshire, a home county northwest of London, the digital pizza mayhem is on a scale you’d expect it find in Naples or New York. The madness exceeds even the imaginings of Vincent, a 41-year-old former teacher who fulfilled his pizza dreams at the pizzeria that bears his name.
If you mute the mockney banter from this video, Vincent could easily pass for a Vincenzo from Napoli or, more likely, a Vinny from Brooklyn. His pizza crust is noisy to the bend and bite, unlike the softer, floppier, more humidified Neapolitan pizzas that prevail at the best pizzerias down in London. It’s New York-style dry and crisp, especially the more charred pies, but it’s not cracker-crisp or cardboard-like. There is give. There is compression to the chew.
Vincenzo’s Margherita, with a melty blend of low-moisture mozzarella, fior di latte mozzarella & Grana Padano
Forget the sublime patchwork of molten, milky-white mozzarella found atop pizzas in Naples. Here the grated, low-moisture mozzarella is scattered, together with small cubes of fior di latte, over a rich tomato base “salted” with Grana Padano. The cheese cover melts under 360-degree (680 F) heat into golden-orange floats of drippy gratification.
Part pizza fan, part pizza geek, Vincent toured the acclaimed pizzerias first of Naples and then New York, fixating on old ones like DiFara in Brooklyn and the original Patsy’s in East Harlem. He binged on KZfaq pizza histories and how-tos. He built a pizza oven in his backyard. His pizza, which he introduced at a popup at The Load of Hay Pub in Watford, is a mashup of those experiences.
“I’m obsessed with the old skool, the old world, the old places,” says Vincent. “I like to imagine what the pizza was like when first-generation Neapolitans were making pizzas in the coal ovens in New York. That’s my inspiration. It all comes from my imagination.”
Vincent fantasises about baking pizza in an old coal oven like the ones still used at old-fashioned pizzerias in New York. But at the pizzeria he opened five weeks ago, all the baking is done in an electric PizzaMaster deck oven. He has no choice. There’s barely enough room in Vincenzo’s to bend your elbows, much less install a coal-heated stone oven.
Vincenzo’s feels like a pizzeria in miniature, constructed for a Wes Anderson film. The brick-walled dining room seats up to 180 people, magically, but no more than 8 at a time.
If you think the shop is a squeeze, just try getting through to the Vincenzo’s storekit.com page at 1pm on any Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday and pre-booking a delectably crisp, delightfully juicy, Brooklyn-inspired Tom Vincent original.
Tom @original_vincenzos_pizza with Daniel @youngandfoodish