Dining Out 017: Dough Hands at The Spurstowe Arms
Lunch in Dalston.
Pizza is a great pub food. Everyone likes it, it’s affordable, it’s carby but not bland, and with a cold lager, it could probably convince you of the existence of an intelligent god. And in London over the last couple of years, we seem to have reached a scenario wherein pizza has sort of transcended simply being an easy thing to order in pubs, to actually become kind of spiritually interconnected with them. Because even without considering the ubiquitous Yard Sale London pub takeover*, it’s evidently the case that a number of the city’s best-loved pizzas are currently being shelled out of the kitchens of boozers**.
Crisp W6, considered by many to be making London’s best pizza – and considered by me to make a garlic dip that I would happily drink in place of water – work out of the Chancellor’s Arms in Hammersmith (and though their reservation system is so complex that you have to reserve your dough a week in advance, and then give your credit card number and mother’s maiden name to a bridge troll who asks you a riddle upon entry to the gaff, it is 100% worth the trek west). Then there is my beloved Dinner for One Hundred at The Perseverance on Lamb’s Conduit Street, the highly-rated Ace Pizza at The Pembury Tavern, and finally, probably my pick of the bunch: Dough Hands at The Spurstowe Arms in Dalston.
Dough Hands make what I can pretty comfortably say is my favourite 12-inch pizza in London. I have been a Dough Hands head for quite a while now – their old residency was at the Three Colts Tavern in Bethnal Green, and my friend Emma and I used to like going for the very good cocktail happy hour and even better pizzas, which were some of the first I’d tried in this current wave of more New York-adjacent styles in London (up until a couple of years ago, Neapolitan ruled the waves and things were, admittedly, getting a bit claggy).
After upping sticks from the Three Colts and taking a bit of a hiatus, Dough Hands are now back, serving up their impressively crisp pies with clever but crowd-pleasing toppings at The Spurstowe. And after trying those pizzas last Sunday, I would probably say they’re the best they’ve ever been.
Now pizza is a simple dish but it is also a very subjective one. Whether you like it with a thin or thick base and a soft or crispy crust is between you and God, and often those preferences can change depending on mood. Sometimes (when you are very very very hungover, depressed, or heartbroken), all that will do it is a Pizza Hut deep pan, for example. That’s just life. But for me, in general, when it comes to a fresh, personal pie (big slices, of course, are a slightly different ball game), I value a thin base that lets the toppings do the talking. That’s what I think Dough Hands does with their self-described “London-style pizza”, which feels influenced by all of the pizzas that this city loves, from buxom Neapolitan burrata pies with pillowy but charred crusts to, literally, Domino’s.
On Sunday, my pal Adam and I ordered two pizzas to share from the menu of about seven (you can also do garlic bread on the side, or a Caesar salad to share, if you like). We went for the Jode, which is a nawty little nduja and hot honey number, and the OG, which stars pepperoni and jalapeños. Each one totally had its own personality. The Jode is the slightly lighter of the two – the nduja is lifted by the sweetness of the honey, some gorgeous lashings of mild stracciatella, and a really palpable whack of basil. It’s indulgent, no doubt, but the herbaceous edge elevates it, refines it even.
As such, it’s kind of the Pam to the much bolshier OG’s Tommy Lee. This one basically appeals entirely to your id, taking the salty, snacky flavours and textures of a pepperoni pizza from a takeaway – the undercurrent of chilli spice, the just-blistered cheese that you could peel off in one if you wanted to, the maddeningly irresistible chewiness of the meat – and applying them the Dough Hands way: abundantly, but in a thin enough layer that the crisp dough can just about support it.
The toppings are generous but never too much (truth be told, I could have eaten way more), though you will, inevitably, get into a mess eating one of these things: probably my major criticism would be that that the crust is sometimes so well-fired that it crumbles a bit as you’re holding onto it, to try to get purchase on the sharp end of the slice. You hardly care about this, however, when you are firmly engaged in the business of scooping up bits of pepperoni and cheese with your fingers from the serving platter.
To say that Dough Hands is great is nothing new – if you’re in any way interested in pizza in the fine city of London you will have heard about what they’re doing. But what I like so much is their concept of “London-style pizza”, because while London could never claim innovations on the form like New York and Detroit and Chicago and Naples, a London-style pizza, like a lot of London-style things, feels like a mish mash of loads of different inspirations. Dough Hands’ pizza, then, feels as much indebted to Pizza Go Go as it is to L’industrie, and that is a fantastic place to be. This pizza makes sense here – it’s fun, busy, lively, and distinctive, but still ultimately comforting too. And as such – it goes without saying, really – but it’s almost certainly the most satisfying thing you could possibly hope eat in a pub.
* That is: if you have recently been to any pub where a TikTok has ever been filmed, you will notice that the London pizza delivery chain Yard Sale (who, don’t get me wrong, make a good product and who, by all accounts, are very nice to their in-house delivery drivers) is offering its services pretty much everywhere. Essentially, you scan the QR code on your table, order and pay for your Yard Sale pizza, and it gets brought to you in the pub by a Yard Sale driver. This is handy, and it helps pubs without kitchens adapt and keep punters inside for longer without much effort, so I get it, but there is also definitely something annoying about the encroachment of stuff like this on places like, say, the Army and Navy. Just my two cents!
** Sorry for two asides in one sentence but I would just like to say this, also: while I would consider pizza one of my top three foods (one: garlic bread, two: pasta, three: pizza, for your information), and I do love ordering one at the pub, it is actually my personal belief that more pubs should succumb to the siren call of Big Sandwich. Sandwiches are an equally great beer food, plus they’re more compact, take up less table space, and hit largely the same spot. The Grove House Tavern in Camberwell has the right idea with Mondo Sando – who dish out big massive Soprano’s-type sandwiches, stuffed with folds of finocchiona or chunks of piri-piri chicken – and I think a lot of pubs would see success if they followed suit. Just my two cents! If you run a pub and you’re reading this and you implement it I’d love a black card.
I paid for this visit.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
Click below to see paid and free subscription options, and thanks very much for reading.
went last week and saw a 'sold out' sign and it's the single worst thing that has ever happened to me.