By Skye Slatcher
I bloody LOVE pizza. It might be my favourite food. Coincidentally, I’m writing this article from Italy, waiting for dinner time when I can go and have more pizza. But London perhaps has some of the best pizza in the world. Admittedly, I haven’t been to the US, so some may say the NYC slice, Chicago deep dish, or Detroit style take the cake — I can’t speak to that. I do know that I have a lot of pizza in London, and have been infrequently disappointed.
One of my recent discoveries in the London pizza scene is Fresh Hot at the Fox in Haggerston. It’s certainly up there among my current favourites — especially among the thin, crispy pizzas. I got in touch with James Fox, the man behind the pizza, to ask some questions.
James had been working in hospitality for about eight years when the pandemic started. He had always had a dream (one that seemed perhaps quite distant) of having a pizzeria. He decided to buy a pizza oven to experiment with during lockdown: “18 months later, I started working for a friend who owns a pizzeria in Donegal, and that is when I really started to plan setting up my own business. I started doing my own pop-ups two years later, after a move to London.”
And since November 2025, he has found himself a residency at The Fox: “I live two minutes down the road and I was cycling past one day and noticed they were painting the outside of it. The pub had been closed for five or six years. I got chatting to the painter and he [gave me] the owner’s number. I had a phone call with him pretty soon after, and we had signed a contract within a few weeks.”
Finding this first residency has been the biggest challenge in the journey so far: “I was actively looking for five or six months with a lot of unreturned emails. But we’ve been lucky that, since setting up at the Fox, it has all been pretty smooth.” And it is such a great place for it — a lively pub for an exciting, young pizza venture.
What makes a good pizza is a highly contested debate. For James, “really good quality produce, long fermented dough, and simplicity goes a long way”. I personally am not entirely sure how I’d tell whether the dough is long-fermented, but I know when I like a pizza. The dough certainly plays a huge part. When I asked James what he thinks Fresh Hot does better than other London pizza spots, he gave a noble answer: “I couldn’t comment on other pizzerias, but what we are proud to do is keep our standards very high across the board and continuously try to improve what we are doing and innovate.” I will say that I think the dough at Fresh Hot beats the dough from any other thin/crispy pizza place I’ve tried in the city.
James’ favourite item on the menu is controversial: the Hawaiian. The Dalston Hot is the best selling. I tried the cheese pizza, which, as I’ve mentioned, I really enjoyed — it is also the ideal point of comparison across restaurants.
I asked James what his other favourite pizzas in London are. He said Doughhands has a close place in his heart, having worked there. My view on Doughhands is that, while the garlic dip is perhaps the best I’ve ever had, the cheese pizza itself is pretty lacking in cheese. He also mentioned Crisp as one he’s a big fan of. I loved the tie-die pie here. Seriously delicious. Spicy vodka sauce, a good amount of cheese, and a lush pesto spiral. Pretty expensive and hard to get a table, but worth the hype.
Fresh Hot’s pizza is great. James says there currently aren’t any major developments in the work, as they remain settling into their new home. I can’t wait to see what else they’ll be doing in the future. In the meantime, I’ll keep testing more pizza places in London. Next on my list? Sarv’s Slice, Napoli on the Road, and Gracey’s.
