A pizzeria with a branch at 140 Wardour Street now holds the title of world's best. At the 50 Top Pizza awards in Naples, held at the Teatro Mercadante, Napoli on the Road was named number one in the world, becoming the first British entrant to take the top spot. The Daily Mail reported the result on 17 September 2026, quoting founder and chef Michele Pascarella, 34, saying he was in shock and calling the result the ultimate honour.
The group has three restaurants in London, in Chiswick, Richmond and Soho. The Soho site is the newest of them, and it means the highest-ranked pizzeria on the planet has a dining room in W1F, a few minutes' walk from Oxford Circus at one end of Wardour Street and Piccadilly Circus at the other. If you want to understand why that matters before you book, start with what the award actually measures. Our listing for Napoli On The Road has the address and the practical details.
What winning 50 Top Pizza really certifies
The 50 Top Pizza guide, now in its tenth year, judges pizzerias on the quality of the food and on the overall dining experience, with inspectors visiting anonymously so staff do not know when they are being assessed. That combination of blind assessment and service weighting means a placing reflects the whole meal rather than a public vote.
For a diner, the practical reading is simple. The judging covers the room, the service and the pacing as well as the dough, so a top placing is a statement about the meal, not only the product. It is also a statement about consistency, because an anonymous inspection tests an ordinary service rather than a showcase one.
From a three-wheeler to a Wardour Street dining room
Pascarella learnt to make pizza growing up in Caserta, near Naples, and moved to the UK at 19. He began the business by driving around London in a three-wheeler Ape Piaggio making wood-fired pizzas, and that van has since become three bricks-and-mortar restaurants in the capital.
The recognition arrived in stages. He was named global pizza maker of the year in 2023, and Napoli on the Road had already been crowned the best pizzeria in Europe. That European ranking excludes Italy, which is what makes the 2026 result different in kind rather than degree. The world list put the London kitchen directly against the country that invented the dish.
"I didn't think we'd have a chance against all the Italian ones," Pascarella told the Daily Mail. "But we did it."
The Soho restaurant arrived on Wardour Street in late 2025, the most recent addition to the group and the one that brought the operation into the West End.
The reputation test that Italy just lost
Napoli on the Road's win ended a long run by I Masanielli, the Caserta pizzeria run by Francesco Martucci, which had taken the title in 6 of the previous 7 years and dropped to joint fourth in 2026. Second place went to Una Pizza Napoletana in New York, third to Confine in Milan.
Martucci's response is the most telling line in the whole story. "Pizza today is a child of the world, you don't have to be in Naples or Caserta to produce the best," he said, adding that Pascarella's Caserta roots showed how people from the area could move abroad and still produce world-beating pizza.
Pascarella makes the same argument from the other direction, naming the assumption that pizza is automatically better in Italy as the biggest misconception a pizza lover can hold. The wider list supports him. Restaurants from 36 countries made the 2026 rankings. Italy still placed the most, 31, followed by the United States with 22, and New York was the single most represented city with 7 entries.
Britain placed 3. Alongside the Soho-connected winner, 50 Kalo in Westminster came 23rd and Stile Napoletano in Chester came 74th.
What is actually on the pizza
The kitchen is known for its margherita and for the Cheesewick, topped with 5 types of Italian cheese and homemade tomato jam. The menu changes every 3 months around seasonal ingredients, which Pascarella links to freshness and flavour, on the basis that seasonal produce is harvested at the right time.
His own advice for eating it is worth knowing before you order. He warns against overloading a pizza with too many toppings, because it makes the base difficult to enjoy, and against reaching automatically for chilli oil, which he says can overwhelm the palate. He also thinks a knife and fork is a mistake, and that a pizza should be paired with a suitable drink. On pineapple he is unambiguous, and against.
Underneath the rules sits a philosophy he has stated plainly. "I believe there is no perfection in making pizza and I think that's the beauty about this job, because it's an artisan work," he told the Daily Mail, describing a process of accepting daily changes in temperature, flour and technique to hold quality steady.
He has also ruled out growth for its own sake, saying he does not want to become a chain despite having had the chance, and that he wants to keep quality high and know his customers by name.
Planning the meal and getting home
Wardour Street sits in Soho, W1F, inside the City of Westminster, and runs the length of the district from Oxford Street down towards Chinatown and Leicester Square. Number 140 puts you in the northern half of the street, near the Berwick Street and Broadwick Street junctions and a short walk from Carnaby.
A few practical notes for anyone building an evening around it:
The nearest Underground entrances are Oxford Circus to the north and Piccadilly Circus to the south, with Tottenham Court Road a slightly longer walk east across Soho.
If the queue or the timing does not work, Rudy's Pizza Napoletana is also on Wardour Street, at number 80, and serves Neapolitan pizza in the same postcode.
For a drink before or after, John Snow is a minute or two away on Broadwick Street.
Check current opening times and whether the Soho branch is taking bookings before you travel, because a world title tends to lengthen a waiting list quickly. If you are walking back afterwards, the two obvious routes are Wardour Street itself towards Shaftesbury Avenue for Piccadilly Circus, or Broadwick Street and Berwick Street north towards Oxford Street for Oxford Circus. The best pizza in Soho is, for now at least, a settled question, and it is served a few hundred metres from either station.
