The restaurant caught my eye after a couple of pints on a Saturday night
Smithdown Road isn’t short of great places to eat and drink. From institutions like the Brookhouse to craft beer bars like Black Cat and the Handyman, the award winning Belzan and French restaurant Epicerie Fine.
But it was a different restaurant that caught my eye after a couple of pints on a Saturday night – and that was Little Furnace. The restaurant is perfect for casual dining with a handful of booths where you can see pizza being cooked in front of you.
It’s an equally popular option for a takeaway, with dozens of orders filtering out the door as we sat inside. I went for the Napoli Salami pizza with a garlic dip, while my partner kept it simple with a margherita.
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The pizza was full of flavour and so soft it literally tore apart. I love a pizza from Rudy’s – the popular restaurant chain – but I would go as far as to say this one was even better. However, there is one thing to bare in mind that may prove controversial with some people.
The nature of the wood fired pizza means it is sofa and chewy with a fluffy crust. Little Furnace’s menu warns this means the pizza is “best eaten with a knife and fork or by folding your slice.”
Now, I know it might seem strange to cut your pizza up with a knife and fork, but I can assure you it was worth every bite. Little Furnace prides itself on being the first to introduce Neapolitan pizza to Liverpool.
It all started back in February 2013 when two friends Ryan and Peter took a trip to Palermo in Sicily. During a slightly drunken evening the friends stumbled into a pizzeria serving Neapolitan style pizza which changed their idea of what constitutes a good pizza.
Upon their return to the UK, Ryan and Peter bought a wood-fired oven and set about doing small events in the city including Cairns Street Market.
They spent the next few years travelling back and forth to Naples to speak to other chefs and serving pizza at food festivals across the UK.
It was in February 2017 that the friends got the keys to 178 Smithdown Road and set about renovating it into a restaurant. In the meantime they opened a stall at the Baltic Market which is still going strong today.
The Smithdown Road restaurant opened a year later in 2018 and is part of a vibrant food and drink offering on the street. I will definitely be returning to the restaurant again soon – and recommend you try it too.
