The Millstream – News from the Grindstone series – 07 Short Road Pizza

Turning a passion project into a permanent business - enabled by taking on residencies in pub kitchens as the latest step towards a permanent home for Short Road Pizza – we pay a visit to Ugo and Riccardo in Leyton, London UK, for our latest instalment of News from the Grindstone.

Short Road Pizza is the creation of Ugo and Kate, a husband-and-wife team who started making pizza during Sundays in lockdown from their new home in Leyton as a way to forge connections with their neighbours during a difficult time. Since then, Short Road has grown through a series of pop-ups, events and collaborations, until they opened a residency in the Three Colts Tavern kitchen in East London in 2024. This was swiftly followed in 2025 by another in the sister pub, the William the Fourth in Leyton. 

Going back to the roots of the Short Road Pizza beginnings, Ugo’s Nonno Gigi had been a pizza chef in Naples in the 1950s, where he fell in love with a female pizza chef, Ugo’s grandmother. They married, and opened a pizza business together. By the late 1960’s they were looking to expand, which prompted a move to Liguria. Two openings followed, “a fine dining restaurant which gained a Michelin star”, and of course, a pizzeria. 

Ugo grew up in Sestri Levante, and describes how at the end of service in his grandad’s pizzeria, he would cook pizza just for the family “a bocco ‘o forno” – “sort of cooked in the mouth of the oven”, Ugo remembers. This method of cooking when the heat of the oven is dying takes longer to cook the pizza, which results in a crispness of the dough – the preference of his grandfather. “The Neapolitan style is more soft, my grandad liked it crispier.”

“Gigi was also very creative with his toppings” Ugo says, for example, “to make sure my grandmother had enough protein, he would get a fillet steak from the butcher and use this for her.” These memories of his grandfather’s dough inform the Short Road Pizza bases today, which are “unique – it is a hybrid, more hydration than a Romana pizza, but stretched like one”. And of course, with the crispiness required to hold its shape. Ugo holds up a slice of freshly cooked pepperoni pizza, and shows me how it doesn’t bend or collapse under the toppings. 

“My grandfather always said how stressful it was to run a restaurant, so it became this thing in my family that you should never get into the business. My mother decided not to go into the restaurant as she thought it was too stressful. I grew up with that idea, but I ended up doing it! I called my grandad a lot in lockdown, and got the pizza oven”. 

Before this, Ugo had been running his own marketing agency with a friend, and Kate is an illustrator. They created fliers, a bit “like Dominos, but not!” and posted them through the doors of the neighbours on Short Road offering Sunday pizzas, all profits from which went to a local foodbank. The purpose was to find a way to connect. They were overrun with orders. He learned his grandfather’s recipes over the telephone, and this was the beginning of Short Road Pizza. 

To make the dough, he creates a biga, and is careful to amend the temperature of the water to both the dough and the temperature of the day, managing the fermentation process to ensure the dough does not overproof or underproof. It is cold fermented for flavour and texture. 

Exale Brewery noticed what they were creating, and got in touch to offer them the kitchen in Bethnal Green at the Three Colts Tavern. This symbiotic relationship works well for both the pub and the pizzeria, and meant that Ugo and Kate could open with relatively low operating costs, rather than being required to have the cash to fit out and design a restaurant. Ugo and Kate’s model of renting a kitchen for the pub residencies enabled them to save enough to take the opportunity to open the second kitchen in Leyton a couple of months ago this year - “it’s a great way to launch a business”, he says of the experience. 

When they opened in Bethnal Green last year, all their neighbours came to the opening night and supported them. Now, after several years of managing the pizzas alongside marketing, Ugo is full time in the pizza business, while Kate is the creative force behind their branding, at the same time as continuing with her freelance work. Of the timing, Ugo says that “it felt right to go 100% in on the pizza”. When they were getting the first kitchen set up, he invited his friend Riccardo (House of Demu) from Sardinia to help. He stayed with them for a month, helping with everything from hiring the team, to testing multiple different flour types to determine what would work best for their dough. 

They use our Shipton Mill Canadian flour for the dough, an Italian semolina, and a British mozzarella for some of the toppings. Ugo says “I use what I like best, I like this British mozzarella for the high fat content”. He chooses products based on personal preference rather than a tie to a particular region or preconception. The tomato sauce base he makes currently contains garlic as he was finding his original sauce “a bit boring”, along with the tomatoes, basil and oregano. It is clear Ugo will create whatever he thinks is delicious, and isn’t afraid to change it up and rework things to keep it interesting. 

The most popular pizzas are the pepperoni and the margherita, but Ugo’s personal favourite is the marinara with added anchovies. His tip for creating his perfect pizza crust is to lightly brush the dough that will form the crust with olive oil before it goes into the oven, which creates a light golden-brown crispness to it, bubbling from the fermentation and packed with flavour. Whilst I’m there, he and Riccardo make the pepperoni royale; the mortadella with Guindilla chillies, fior di latte mozzarella, burrata and black pepper; and the marinara with house garlic puree, chimichurri, burrata and anchovies. They are spectacular. 

What’s next for the Short Road Pizza journey has still to be decided, although it’s clear Ugo and Kate aren’t wasting any time and some kind of expansion or growth is on the horizon.

Ugo would like Short Road to have its own restaurant one day, “maybe in Soho”, and their two pub residency openings have created a strong feeling of momentum and energy behind them. With their unique combination of marketing experience and passion for creating pizza, the future for Short Road Pizza feels exciting. This team is certainly going places. 

Their new menu launches imminently, and you can find them in Bethnal Green at the Three Colts Tavern, or the William the Fourth in Leyton. You can also order pizza online for collection if you’re in the area. 

Website: https://www.shortroadpizza.com/Instagram: @shortroadpizza Short Road Pizza Co.