If Richard Curtis had directed The Sopranos, the result would look an awful lot like Lauretta’s. Yes, this pizzeria from the team behind 75 Slices is on Hackney’s reigning floral thirst trap, Columbia Road, but squint a little, sip a glass of vino, and you’re in the Springsteen and pie heartland of New York. Even the concise menu, that consists of seven pizzas and a few slice sidekicks like burrata, is headlined with ‘Lauretta’s’ written in the looping, nostalgic cursive favoured by old-school New York-Italian heavyweights like Emilio’s Ballato and Ortobello’s. While we appreciate the set-dressing, the pizzas add all the mutz-slinging, r-dropping charm to a meal here. Chewy, proudly thin, with a fire-kissed, puffy crust that dips and peaks like the Dolomites, these pizzas are not messing around and go toe-to-toe with some of the finest slices we’ve tried on the other side of the Atlantic. The vodka margherita doesn’t have the meaty, burrata-crowned pizzazz of the Calabrian Supreme and the Double Pepperoni, but it’s easily the best pizza here—no ego, just a pitch-perfect creaminess matched with a zingy tomato tang. It’s a pizza worth pausing conversation for, even if this is a setting that operates on speed. As is the case with many pizzerias, Lauretta’s moves quickly and inside, it has a bit of a transitory feel that remains chilled no matter how many Aperol spritz campaigns you try to champion. There isn’t any time to nurse a Negroni before your pizza arrives and once you’ve wiped up the last of the garlic dip, you’ll be back out on Columbia Road seeking something sweet from somewhere else. Lauretta’s might not have big night out potential, but it has something that we love even more than a knees-up—excellent NYC-style pizza.