Lenny’s Apizza at The Bedford Tavern, Finsbury Park, London N7 7PT
The rise of New Haven shows no signs of flopping
Since 2017, I’ve lost count of the nights I’d lie awake with one side of my face firmly sunk into my pillow, staring into the oily blue glow of my phone at Dave Portnoy’s One Bite Pizza Reviews. It was an unhealthy habit; my cortisol levels spiking at the frustration of the UK’s comparatively one-dimensional pizza scene, where the single real nuance was the base: regular, thin, deep pan, Sicilian or stuffed crust.
The only remotely artisanal reprieve was the bloody Neapolitan. For years, I’d railed against its monopoly; soupy chinslappers that were all mouth and no trousers when it came to getting down to the act — everything sluicing off in a treadmill-like action until you hit a billowing crust that seemed to take up more real estate than it was worth. Every fibre in me yearned for the exact opposite.
So when Portnoy began raving about New Haven-style, it was a blessed revelation; the longer cook, coaxing a deep caramelisation across the board, gradually intensifying into a crust vignetted with char. Ironically, this caused my cortisol to spike harder than ever because the UK was still in its pizza infancy. The closest I could get to New Haven style was slapping a Dr. Oetker directly on the oven rack and taking it to the brink of incineration.
The New Haven influence is fundamental to the now legendary Crisp, Gracey’s and Vincenzo’s, but one style remained unimported until August 2024. A self-taught Max Lewis left his software days behind, seeking to bring ‘apizza’ — pronounced ‘ah-beetz’ — to the UK, following a visit to its original spot, Frank Pepe’s in Connecticut, famous for its ‘tomato pie’. Rather than the rigid, unwavering slices that otherwise characterise the New Haven style through its use of strong bread flour over the 00 of Neapolitan, apizza is summed up by Lenny’s motto: crispy, chewy, charred.
Often under the misapprehension of being exclusively coal-fired, New Haven used to use coke, a byproduct of the natural gas industry, as fuel due to costs. The amount of politicking around the New Haven style might seem tedious, but just as nonnas can start throwing hands over the secret to a good sugo, it’s indicative of the passion food can stir in people. Perhaps fitting, then, that another calling card of the apizza style is how it’s sliced — appearing to be the work of someone who woke up and chose violence, which, if you’ve seen his social media tirades, Max seems to regularly.
Donning a neck gaiter pulled up over his face, Max announced his arrival to the London pizza scene, not so much by throwing a hat into the ring, but lobbing a grenade and abseiling through the window while firing full-auto from the hip instead. As the smoke cleared, the online community was left dazed, confused, and for some, wounded.
A spring coiled by the frustration of people’s ignorance about apizza, Max lashes out at a world that, on one hand, he indulges in railing against with a smirk, yet on the other, seems genuinely exasperated to have to be a part of. It’s all arguably self-inflicted — an adolescent energy ironically fuelled by an equally adolescent UK pizza scene — but it does ostensibly spawn from a genuine passion for his craft. Although he has some favourites, his otherwise dogged strafing of influencers is refreshing and, at times, something to behold.
Make your way toward The Bedford Tavern in Finsbury Park, and the air begins to thicken with the toasty bittersweetness of caramelising carbs and fats, where watching Max work is quietly fascinating. With headphones glued to his ears, he resembles Baby Driver; willfully deaf to the world in the name of achieving a hyper-focused flow-state in a space no wider than the oven itself, operating like a man possessed.
While there are specials, going for the more basic seems like a good litmus test, with two pies: cheese & tomato and the pepperoni. Overhanging their metal trays, these warped, thin-based ellipses are mottled with char; there’s a weight to a Lenny’s slice, causing it to bow, but not flop, owing to the elasticity of the dough.
Chunky to the point of juiciness, the hand-applied San Marzano sauce is intense with deep, fruity undertones. Little pieces bursting throughout, the mozzarella and Pecorino Romano weld themselves to it, ensuring clean, intact bites to the sooted crust, all blended with a satisfying, toothsome chew.
The pepperoni is a Goldilocks thickness, punctuating each slice with a gnarled, meaty hit, interpsersed with tears of fresh basil. Shakers of desiccated Parmesan and chilli flakes sit on the table, allowing you to customise a little, which is a touch that should be standard.
They say, ‘Don’t listen to what people say — watch what they do,’ and at the heart of it, Max’s incendiary reputation only belies his affection, not just for his craft, but perhaps strangely, for people — and his dog, after which Lenny’s is named. The menu is shaped by homages to the greats of apizza, with a tomato pie in honour of Frank Pepe’s and one named after Ray Santiago, who’s worked at Sally’s Apizza since he was 13.
There’s even a halal pie — The Muhammad Ali — with sucuk, lamb merguez, red onion and hot chillis on a classic cheese & tomato base, in acknowledgement of the local Muslim community. With prices ranging from £10.50 to £16, Max clearly wants to share his love for apizza by making it eminently accessible in any way possible.
It’s a 2-man operation from a ‘spit and sawdust’ kind of pub; what you see is what you get, and there’s a rare value in that, to say nothing of his prices, irrespective of living in London. The notion of ‘authenticity’ in food is, for many, a hollowed, nebulous idea; there’s still a lot to be said for the sincerity of the people who make it, and on this count, you can’t knock Max. That said, New Haven natives have given his pies clearance — what more proof do you need?