Donna Margherita

Best pizzeria in the neighborhood. Ok, I haven’t tried all of them, but still. The pizza are just awesome (especially the dough), the Italian wine was great and the manager is very commercial and nice.
Thank you for the night. :)
The frenchy family.

Now… Italian food is difficult. It’s easy to make a decent dish. But to make it very good is difficult. The path to authentic pizza is full of failures… pizza express for one.
This place does it very well and that should be the reason to visit it. The service is relaxed… maybe too relaxed. If you have the time to sit and enjoy very good pizza and nice surroundings then you have to come here.

This is the place to be for good Italian pizza in London. I’ve been there countless times by now, and I am never disappointed. The only time I didn’t want a pizza while in here I went for a seafood pasta and again it was delicious. They recently enhanced the wine selection so make sure to ask for a recommendation based on what you have ordered. The only thing I don’t like here is the tiramisú but no one can be perfect right? Just get cannoli or pastiera and enjoy yourself!

One of my favourite Italian restaurants in London primarily for its authenticity to Cucina Napoletana.
It’s far from fancy and service can be a bit slack but this place is all about the food. It’s worth the visit alone if you want good, honest, traditional and quality Neapolitan cuisine. Pasta is perfectly cooked (al dente) while the pizza is the the best you’ll find outside of Naples — it’s all in the dough preparation and resting process.
In a nutshell, the restaurant is much like Naples itself; rough around the edges, but ultimately satisfying.

I don’t get it. We went to Donna Margherita on the recommendation of a Neapolitan friend & had Pizza. It was so disappointing. The pizzas were doughy, soggy and fairly bland. The coffee was superb however.

I maintain all the bellow — but had to raise the review to 5 stars! Everything is delicious and fresh!

Mind blowingly good pizza

Lovely romantic place in Clapham. Ideal for a night out to relax and chat. Loevely food, starters and wine… Would definetly recomend to all italian food lovers!!!

Been coming here for years. Speaking as an italian, it’s one of, if not THE best authentic neapolitan pizza in London. The rest of the menu is great too — authentic neapolitan grub. Warm, lively atmosphere and all for a good price.

This is the place for Neapolitan food — and though you can get a range of food, I love the pizza the best. It’s another cosy and buzzing restaurant that can accommodate a group of friends or a romantic dinner. The first time I was there, the owner came over and showed me how to eat my pizza the true Neapolitan way by folding each slice over so it was easy to eat by hand.

Had an excellent pizza here, and cheese board which introduced me to Tallegio cheese which explains the enormous half devoured chunk in my fridge and the stabbing pains in my abdomen.
Donna Margherita doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it has the jumbled warmth of a lovingly assembled Italian restaurant. Italian football shirts pinned high up on the walls and black and white pictures of Totò affectionately framed.
I was eating with two seafood lovers (aka FREAKS) so I was forced at gunpoint to try the seafood linguine and the octopus and a million other betentacled/​shelled things which shouldn’t really be eaten and should acutally just be left well damn alone in their rockpools. All were delicious and dressed well.
Like most italians (And I mean actual Italians and Italian restaurants) there is about as much space as there is chance for quiet contemplation, but eating in an italian restaurant that is any different would detract massively from the experience.

I stopped in here before heading over to Battersea Arts Centre for a show. Oh my word, I don’t understand the other reviews on here — perhaps the place has changed hands or something — because our meal was bad in pretty much every way a meal could be.
The service was awful — not just tiresomely slow, but rude and uninformed when it got there. And it wasn’t just one waiter having a bad day — this was what we got across the board. Admittedly we were in a corner outside that was easily overlooked, but we were pretty clear that we were in a rush, and yet it still took over an hour between sitting down and getting any kind of food.
And it’s not like the food was worth the wait. The pasta was undercooked (I am not talking al dente — I am talking raw), the salad was oily and tasteless, the garlice bread was burnt, dry and tasteless.
Then they got annoyed when they asked if everything was fine and we didn’t rave.
Then they got the bill wrong.
Then they couldn’t get the card machine to work.
I realise that you’re not exactly flush with places to eat if you’re going to BAC but, really, avoid this place at all costs.

You really don’t have to leave London, in fact you don’t even have to leave work, for international cultural and culinary exchange. I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about Neapolitan cuisine as, for the past 4 years I have worked in the midst of Little Napoli. I know now how a perfect pizza has to look and taste like (with Naples being the cradle of pizza) and I have also learned about Friarielli, a green vegetable from the same family as broccoli (only much better in my opinion) which grows on the hills around Naples.
So there I was, perfectly equipped to scrutizinze the Neapolitan food at Donna Margherita. This rustic and cosy Italian trattoria is located on Lavender Hill, about 5 minutes walk away from Battersea Junction. What makes it interesting for me is its closeness to the Battersea Arts Centre, one of my favourite theatres in London (if you like quirky and different and a lot of attention to detail you will love it too).
According to Donna Margherita’s website it is the favourite restaurant of Johnny Vaughan, Capital FM 2010. I have no idea who this guy is and in general I don’t trust radio DJs, so the maybe better recommendation comes from Time Out nominating Donna Margheritaas one of the best pizzas in London.
Interestingly, the Pizza Donna Margeritha (9.90) did not blow me away at all. It tasted lovely (what can possibly go wrong when you combine melting buffalo mozzarella with aromatic and sweet cherry tomatoes) but the dough was soggy. I learned from my Italian friends that a perfect Neapolitan pizza has to be crisp so this felt like a small let down.
The pasta on the other hand was divine. From the specials menu we chose Rings of pasta with olive oil, aubergine, pesto, cherry tomatoe, sea bass and chili. The combination of perfectly al dente pasta with plenty of olive oil, the concentrated taste of eggplant and cherry tomatoes was so good, I could have eaten a second portion straight away. I would not have needed the sea bass but then again it came as a welcomed addition. This was one of the nicest pasta dishes outside of Italy I have eaten in a long time .
Ahh and the Friarielli! It fortunately has in my opinion very little to do with broccoli, the slightly bitter taste reminds me more maybe of pak choi or some other Chinese leaf vegetable I can’t name. Again with plenty of olive oil and some garlic this was a wonderful side dish.
The service was rather bad (or deaf) I have to say we got 2 wrong starters! instead of rings of pasta we got rings of calamari and instead of Friarielli we got Friarielli and Beans. I hope the waiter went to an ENT specialist straight afterward.
Anyway, the pasta was so delectable that I can forgive a couple of minor issues. I don’t know if the flaccid pizza base was a one time bad luck or a recurrent feature. Has any of you eaten at Donna Margherita and experienced the pizza? I wouldn’t go back for pizza but would happily eat myself through the pasta menu. Nom.

I have just been to this restaurant and in general it was a very good experience. And I would be back again, at least for their apppetizers!
The oven baked calamari and octopus salad were just out of this world as long as you weren’t watching the calorie intake as they are covered in oil. I had a pizza for the main course and it was great apart from the pizza tasting slightly burnt because of what seems bad cleaning of the oven and the spaghetti that my wife had had too much tomato purée in its sauce that it was acidic.
The service was as it should be, smiley and quick. but its charge was added automatically to the bill.
The price is quite reasonable, expect to pay 15−20£ a head for food without drinks

Cute Italian place located in the Clapham neighborhood of London.
Stopped by for the following:
1) Olives —
2) Margherita Pizza — tomato, mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, Parmesan and fresh basil —
Flavors were good. Dough was chewy… but didn’t think the dough was «charred» enough.
3) O’spaghett Donna Margherita — spaghetti with fresh cherry tomatoes, basil, garlic and extra virgin olive oil —
Tomato sauce was too sweet for my tastes. Otherwise, all of the other flavors were very good.
4) Desserts —
5) Bottle of Wine —
This wine was a recommendation from our waiter. The wine was pretty good but did not pair with the pizza or spaghetti. Not sure what he was thinking…
Anyhow, food was pretty good overall. Worth a stop by.

Best pizza with terrace seating south of the river, or possibly London area. I had Pizza Napoli and Salade pulp (octopus) on a wonderful summer eve. Great attitude and great pizza.

This is not only the best Pizza in London, Id say its the best Pizza in Europe.
Having been to Italy recently I found the pizza at Donna Margherita to be vastly superior. They are right on the button with their ingredients and pizza bases.
Often after pizza I feel bloated, a bit sick or feel like I need to run 6 miles. I just can’t get enough of Donna Margherita’s pizzas though, it is well worth the mission.

Seriously! Go! I had the most authentically scrumptious plate of pasta (
) I’ve had outside of Naples. I hate the fact that Donna Margherita is so far from where I live. It’s tough for me to find the time to make it down to Clapham. But if I were local, I’d go there all the frickin’ time.
I found service to be exceptionally gracious. The wine list is top notch. The décor, very Neapolitan. And the glorious, glorious food is some of the best Italian you’ll find in London!

A great Italian, locally famous for its wood-​fired pizzas, but serving great antipasto, pasta and other dishes as well. It can be a bit noisy, but they’re always friendly and welcoming, and some of the pizzas I’ve had have been world-​beating.
They’ve got stiff competition, with Firezza and Basilico nearby, but I always get my pizzas from here.

Have heard it is better if you dine in than get takeaway. We ordered pizza which arrived quite soggy.
Have read reviews though about the pizza bread being amazing in the restaurant so maybe we were unlucky.
It didn’t feel much different to Firezza and is not up there with Alba from Clapham.