Lola’s

Lola’s is a family-friendly pizzeria and the sophomore venue from Harriet Roxburgh and Harry Peasnell, who run the beloved sandwich shop, Peggy’s. It’s in the same Imperial Chambers building, in a charming space with handsome beetroot-coloured stone, salvaged jarrah timber, terracotta wine holders and painter Ash-Lee Clarke’s palette of earthy tones.

The pizza menu is classically minded with choices split evenly between red-sauce and white-based pies including vegetarian options. Slow-fermented dough is stretched into thin bases, which are cooked a little longer than the more familiar Neapolitan pizzas. The house cheese mix is made of low-moisture mozzarella (the mozzarella of choice in New York-style slices) provolone dolce and Gruyere. Drier cheese and a sturdier base means a heftier pizza as well as something you can reheat and eat the next morning with impunity.

There’s also a limited “grandma slice”: a square-shaped pizza baked in a deep-sided tray that produces a crisp, crunchy and high-walled crust of cheese. (For the pizza nerds: it’s not a strict New York-style grandma slice, but borrows from the style as well as the similar Sicilian pizza playbook, plus the tao of Detroit-style deep-pan pizza.)

A small edit of pizza-adjacent sides makes up the rest of the menu. House-smoked meatballs bring some American red-sauce fun to the party, while a bread salad and bitter greens crunched up with toasted seeds and nuts are also on hand. A wine list sporting low mark-ups and a selection that’s two-thirds conventional and one-third natural ensures everyone’s looked after drinks-wise. A couple of tap beers and house cocktails round things off.