Secret Pizza in Nottingham is located in the small alleyway alongside Rough Trade on Broad Street in Hockley. It is a pop-up pizza spot that will I understand be there at least until the autumn run by a trio of pizza enthusiasts Will, Joe, and Daniel.

They are selling a selection of Italian inspired sour dough pizza Thursday to Sunday kind of between about 12-8pm. I have been over to see them twice now, once midday and once near the end of the day and I have quite enjoyed what I have had to eat.

Margherita

Secret Pizza have a Italian Margherita Pizza topped with “San Marzano Tomatoes, Parmegiano Reggiano, Buffalo Mozzarella, and Fresh Basil” as their go to ‘basic’ pizza and then a lot of their other more ‘fancier’ pizza combinations are built on top of that one.

I figured that it would be a good idea to try the simpler Margherita to see what their pizza was all about and just to get a feel for the style and flavours.

I liked a lot about the pizza, the San Marzano Tomatoes are sweet, fresh, and flavourful and make a good base layer, perhaps it is a little wet and too juicy as I noticed that stuff was sliding off my pizza crust if I wasn’t quick enough to stuff it into my mouth. The two cheeses are also tasty and the mozzarella has that nice bit of chewy texture that make the cheese  little bit stringy as it pulls apart with each bite. Inside the sauce they have mixed in garlic and oregano to add the classic Italian herb flavours and the fresh basil adds a nice, sweet, peppery and ever so slight mintiness.

The crust was quite good, perhaps a little thin, but on this particular pizza it was firm enough and had a nice chewy bite and a nice mild taste of the burn from the charring on the oven. I heard that they use UK Heritage grade, unbleached stone ground flour to make their 18 hour sough dough for the pizza base. I felt that did add a much deeper soulful flavour and made the pizza crust a lot more desirable to chew into.

The Fiorentina Pizza

The Fiorentina Pizza was most certainly an attractive little disc of dough topped delight. It is essentially as described on the menu as being “Our Margherita”  topped with a  ‘Biodynamic Free Range Egg‘, and ‘Baby Spinach‘ (a lot of baby spinach).

I really like the soft yolked egg, I honestly don’t think I have ever seen such a yellow yolk before. I swear it was almost glowing! I was quite impressed that the white was all cooked through properly where it had seeped it’s way in amongst the pizza topping and yet the yolk was still perfectly runny. A word of warning though, this yellow yolk was like getting turmeric on your fingers so make sure that you wipe it off otherwise you may like I walk, off with bits of vibrant egg yolk dribbled down your chops 🙂

The Fiorentina Pizza is what I would call a pizza with ‘grown up tastes’. It is quite herbaceous will all that spinach and you do have to like that slight iron taste of the spinach leaf to enjoy this combination.

I did like the toppings and the flavours, but I worried that it was a bit too wet a mix as my pizza seemed to be a little bit on the soggy side and not as crisp as the basic Margherita. I think that either it needed a little longer in the oven to crisp up, or perhaps a thicker base to cope with all that stuff on top. Don’t get me wrong though, I enjoyed it, I am just being picky 🙂

Menu (sort of – worlds worst photo effort) 🙁

Secret Pizza has a good selection of topping combinations at very good prices. You can get yourself a decent sized disc of Pizza here for 5-6 quid, and considering the quality of the ingredients involved that is a pretty sweet deal.

The chaps running the place are very enthusiastic and seem pretty chatty and down to earth so it was a cool spot to hang out in the alley next to Rough Trade for a while watching the world go by up and down Broad Street.

Secret Pizza is located at 5 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 3AG

Open Thursday to Sunday (12-8pm)

Check them out on their Facebook Page, and on their Instagram Feed at @secretpizzanottingham