4. Fatto a Mano w/ Damson
A meal featuring riffing, reminiscence and needlessly tight tables ⛑
📍 Fatto a Mano, King’s Cross, N1C 4AG
📆 6:45pm, Tuesday 4th February
London Pizza Pal is back! On my two week hiatus I’ve been on a strict Rocky-style training regime, exercising my typing fingers and pizza cutter technique so that I can come back bolder, bigger, better.
To remind readers of the mission: Yes, of course it’s about sampling some of the capital’s best pizza. But this. Means. More. It’s also about celebrating friends and the those shared calzone connections that makes a pizza experience so magical.
This is the fourth edition of the London Pizza Pal newsletter - enjoy! 🍕
THE VENUE
A restaurant I hadn’t heard of before this project, Fatto a Mano has three London locations - Covent Garden, Bethnal Green and King’s Cross.
The King’s Cross branch sits in that nether-zone between the station and Coal Drop’s Yard, making it unbelievably convenient for me (and most of London) to pop in after work.
I hadn’t realised, though, that it sits slap bang in between two partner organisations’ offices, which did make me jumpy that the horror of ‘unexpected networking’ would be on the menu.
The good news is that’s not how we’re judging our pizza - instead, we can use far more robust and watertight metrics like my revolutionary P.A.S.T.A framework.
THE PIZZA
Each of our five P.A.S.T.A. categories are judged independently and summed to give a total out of 25 - essential, comparative tools to determine London’s best slice. Let’s see how Fatto a Mano got on:
PRICE - 3 / 5
The baseline, the cost of a humble Margherita, gives me a consistent reference across pizza experiences.
£11.50 is about what I’d expect from a central London spot. Tre punti! (that means three points).
APPEARANCE - 4 / 5
Everyone chant with me:
CHAR-RING! CHAR-RING! CHAR-RING!
Goddamn I love both chanting and charring. The way those air pockets rise within the dough? The speckled crust colouring? Divine.
SERVICE - 3 / 5
Every server we had (I think we had four?) was polite and friendly. In two words? Perfectly pleasant.
TASTE - 4 / 5
We’re approaching territory where someone more extroverted than me would start barking to demonstrate how good this was.
To be clear, I did not and will not be doing that. It did taste really good though.
Alongside the Marg, we chose the Diavola and it was excellent. A comforting, warming heat from the chili and a fantastically chewy sourdough base. Andiamo, let’s go.
AMBIENCE - 3 / 5
Slightly strange layout. The kitchen is downstairs and all seating is on a mezzanine above. Every table was full, but the background dining hum never drowned out the conversation.
Minus points because the tables were unbelievably close together. Our guest actually kicked four people by accident, simply by existing. As such, cannot give higher than a three.
All in, Fatto a Mano was the most consistent dinner across all scoring categories so far and it’s that reliability that means it goes top of the leaderboard!
The half point marginal gains are really proving the key difference here - an early prediction from me is that it’ll be a 5/5 service score that ultimately crowns the champion.
Have you been to Fatto a Mano? Agree with the scoring? Leave a comment with your thoughts (unless you disagree with me, in which case I’m NOT interested)
THE GUEST
Name: Damson
Job: Volunteer Manager for a children’s charity
Last pre-pizza rendezvous: About three months ago
This is Damson!
Really, we’re university friends, but we actually met long before that - in April 2015 at a overnight open-day at Robinson College, Cambridge.
Damson stayed in close contact with some other school pals that were there, and so we did hang out another handful of times before arriving at university (conspicuously not Cambridge) in October 2016. It was performing in the Freshers’ Play, though, that formed a mutual friend group and a cemented a firmer relationship between us.
Lacking any tact, I cack-handedly ask every diner to share a nice shared memory of our time as friends, and it was the emergence of that kinship in the basement of a theatre that Damson recounted to me.
She spoke of how in the chaos of being 18 in a new city, it was reassuring to see an older acquaintance gel so easily with a group of new friends - a reminder that there are excellent people around and that finding them can be transformative for all involved.
I can only agree - eight years later, one of that clan is a three-year-plus housemate, and only yesterday did we house another on their short visit up from Bristol.
Our shared interests? Aside from those mutual friends, dressing up as Vikings, calling out people on their nonsense, and the Glaswegian playwright Guy Woods (who Damson surreptitiously texted mid-meal from the toilet).
The rest of the evening’s conversation ranged from working in the charity sector to much sillier things - a personal favourite being a riff on getting so angry at something that you must be “held back, medically”.
It’s that intensity of character that I value so much in Damson. A tour de force, her energy never comes at the behest of time for a heart-to-heart about the ‘real stuff’ - a balance that others, myself very much included, struggle with.
My memory of Damson encapsulates this entirely. In a post-graduation frenzy, at the end-of-year drama society party, she bought me a tequila shot at the bar of a weird hotel, away from the dancefloor and everyone else.
It had been touch and go whether I was going to finish my degree on time. Knowing this, Damson made a point of saying how glad she was that things had worked out okay, and how excited she was for me to see what happened next.
It was thoughtful, genuine, and kind - three hallmarks of Damson. It was also exactly what I needed, and so I cannot thank her enough.
A failure on my part. I neglected to confirm a question from last edition’s diner, Aisling, and therefore cannot continue the (thus far ill-fated) attempt at continuity between editions.
I can only apologise, then, that we won’t be learning a little more about Damson. She’s assured me though that there will be a sequel to our dinner. Next time, I promise.
And with that, another pizza review is in the books! A wonderful experience to remember and I’m already looking forward to the next.
Subscribers will get edition #5 delivered directly to their inbox on February 22nd and I really hope to welcome you back then!
Bye! 🍕
Want to be a guest and join me for dinner? Book your slot using this calendar: https://cal.com/andrew-cowburn/pizza
First date with the mrs was at fatto a mano - feeling validated 👍