Dining Out 025: Voodoo Ray's

Dinner in Peckham.

London restaurant culture is pretty obsessed with newness – one day the thing people care about is some place where you pull out a little drawer to take out your knife and fork, the next it’s a highly decorative bread everyone’s apparently clucking to eat because they keep seeing it on Instagram or whatever. 

I’m as guilty as anyone of being somewhat compelled by novelty – I mostly write about new places here, after all – but in the last week, the only actual dining out I’ve done has been at a place I’ve eaten at more times than I can list: Voodoo Ray’s, a New York-style pizza place in Peckham, which also has another branch in Dalston.

When I first moved to London in 2015, I thought Voodoo Ray’s was very glamorous because it had a neon sign and was pretty much the only place in the city where you could get a big slice of pizza, like in New York. That was also around the time when chewy, soft Neapolitan pizza really was the dominant style – I remember going to Pizza East and thinking it was the height of coolness – and chains like Franco Manca and Pizza Pilgrims were in their relative infancy. 

Obviously these days, pizza in the city is a very different proposition, with the most in-demand style being the NY slice, but back then, Voodoo Ray’s was the only place really doing it. Its generous, foldable slices, cut from gigantic 22-inch pies, in classic flavours like Margherita and Pepperoni, kind of feel like part of the fabric of my life in London – just always familiar, always there when you need something quick and good.

Last Saturday – after I got shushed in the pub for celebrating a 76th minute Jhon Duran screamer, in a Villa match which had seen us losing to Everton for a decent portion of it, and before I went to see Azealia Banks perform a virtuosic hour-long set at Brixton Academy, wherein she basically did not speak a word outside of the songs – my friend Emma and I needed something quick and good. Our plans to go somewhere more formal were thrown out by timing, and to be honest, I was pleased, because sometimes, I do just secretly really want Voodoo Ray’s.

We pulled up to the counter where you order, right by the door, the pizzas on display behind glass, lit up like Rolexes in a jewellery shop case. The music was loud like it always is – some chaotic Flowdan edit – and the booths that line the left hand side of the room were all full of groups sharing big pizzas, talking loudly over the tunes. I selected my usual – a slice of cheese pizza, and a slice of pepperoni. With a gin and tonic plus a pot of sriracha mayo (garlic is only for when you’ve got nowhere to be), my grand total was about £16, which isn’t to be sniffed at considering how truly massive the slices are. 

These slices themselves, for what it’s worth, have barely changed over the years. They still come served on paper plates that ultimately end up drenched with oil, and the crust is still so thick and doughy you can actually pull at it with your teeth, like a dog with a chew toy. The bottom of the slice is crisp but not especially thin compared to the fare at some other pizza places that have popped up of late, but that’s not a bad thing since since it means the slice is malleable, and feels substantial. The cheese is always puckered and browned in that New York style pizza way, and to bite it you pretty much have to fold it up like a laundered bedsheet. It has pretty much always been exactly like this. 

This constancy is a bit of a trip, because when I think about it, I have so many memories that are attached to these very specifically massive pizzas with soft, dusted crusts, and pepperoni discs that pool with oil at the centre. Over the past nine years – my whole life as an adult really – I’ve eaten Voodoo Ray’s pizza in so many different situations. 

When I worked at VICE, we used to shit ourselves when the enormous pizzas would get wheeled in from the old Shoreditch branch, at Boxpark, because the “pizza and beer” treats often meant that a decent wedge of the office were about to get the sack. We knew the company’s game (“We’re a family! Here’s pizza instead of a pay rise!”), but ultimately we didn’t want to buy our own dinner, so down the slippery little gullets the big slices went. 

I also ate Voodoo Ray’s the last-but-one time I moved house, once again with Emma and my then-boyfriend, who had both valiantly assisted me in lugging my stuff up an insanely narrow flight of stairs, into a room that essentially resembled a train carriage, over-bed storage and all. That day we also ordered a round of freezing cold, sharp, frozen lageritas* for the table, because I’d just moved into the London rental equivalent of the fucking Caledonian Sleeper and I needed all the joie de vivre I could get.

I’ve eaten it with my pals so many times when everywhere else was too busy, I’ve eaten it on countless dates (the funniest one being when I sat directly across from a man and went to town on two massive slices, hoovering them up in probably about three minutes total, then apologised to him for the grossness, to which he responded: “No, it was quite hot actually”). I’ve eaten it with people I love or have loved, and I have eaten it alone, perched momentarily at a table, needing to satisfy the sudden pang for a slice-shaped snack. I’ve even ordered it to my home on a hangover, dying for the greasy NY style you can’t get anywhere else in the local area. 

It’s important to have places like this, where you always go back, especially in London, where everything always seems to vanish from underneath you. Stuff is always changing – there’s a new restaurant doing a goat’s cheese canele; you have to try the brown butter pancakes at this other one – so it’s nice to hold on to some things if you can.

For me, getting pizza with Emma at Voodoo Ray’s and chatting shit about how bad the majority of music journalism is while waving a crust about, for example, is just something I’ve always done, and that I’m sure I’ll do again. As such, thinking about Saturday and then thinking about the many, many other times I’ve eaten at Voodoo Ray’s has been kind of a reminder of a saying I think about a lot. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In this case, that is actually true. Even if it’s just pizza. 

* Lagerita, noun (lar-ger-ee-ta): a pint with a pump of frozen marg in the top.

I paid for this visit.

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Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, 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.

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