Santa Maria Pizzeria

Two Neapolitans fitted the room out themselves, shipped the wood oven over from Italy, and opened in Ealing on Valentine's Day 2010.

Why go

Angelo Ambrosio and Pasquale Chionchio had spent years in other people's London kitchens before deciding that Ealing needed a proper Neapolitan pizzeria (Santa Maria). They opened with twenty-six covers on St Mary's Road, and Time Out named it London's best pizza two months later, which put a queue down the street (Hospitality & Catering News). Andy Hayler reviewed that original room in August 2010 and found a wood oven at 400C cooking a pizza in ninety seconds. The business moved five hundred metres to Bond Street in 2020 for the space, and that site was refurbished and reopened on 28 August 2025. There are six Santa Marias in London now. The house position, stated on their own site, is "Quality and quantity at honest prices", and that pizzerias are not second-class restaurants.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Santa Caterina, tomato, fiordilatte, salame Napoli and fresh chilli, which is the pizza Hayler ordered and the one the kitchen leads on. The Santa Maria, their marinara with garlic and oregano and no cheese, if you want the dough on its own. The vegan San Filippo is built as a pizza rather than a concession.
• Avoid: expecting the twelve-table room the reputation was built in, because that closed in 2020. And book at peak.

What locals & experts say

• Andy Hayler (29 August 2010), reviewing the original St Mary's Road site: "the point of the place is the pizzas, and the two that we tried were very good indeed. The base was soft and supple, which is the mark of a proper Neapolitan pizza: the toppings pleasant, the tomatoes imported from Italy." He scored the pizzas 13/20 and paid £6.45 for a Santa Caterina. Sixteen years old, and about the previous premises. ref
• Harden's, whose survey is diners rather than a critic and which rates the group rather than this address: "The pizza is second to none", combining "top-quality ingredients and fabulous bases", with "authentic slow fermentation of the dough". Its most recent read is cooler: the group was "well-rated this year, if not as stratospherically as days gone by". ref
• James Elliot, co-founder of Pizza Pilgrims, told TOPJAW his best pizza in London is "Pasquale and Angelo, the guys that run Santa Maria, they're the OG Neapolitan pizza guys". That is a pick of the founders and the business rather than of any one address, and with six sites it cannot be pinned to this room, so it is recorded here and carries no endorsement tag.
• One vote in our files is about a different branch. Elliot Cunningham of Eld Pizza praises a marinara with fresh anchovies at Santa Maria Fulham. Different premises, and it is not used.

Good to know

• Where: 11 Bond Street, Ealing W5 5AP. Ealing Broadway.
• Which one: this is the Ealing site, the founding neighbourhood. The others are Fulham, Islington, Fitzrovia, Paddington and Kew, each a separate premises.
• What changed: the original 26-cover room was on St Mary's Road until 2020. Bond Street was refurbished and reopened on 28 August 2025.
• Booking: worth it. The queues have followed this business around Ealing for fifteen years.
• Diet: the menu carries a Vegan Margherita and a Vegan San Filippo made with vegan mozzarella. That is the venue's own statement. Nothing addresses gluten or cross-contamination, so no gluten claim is made here.
• Hygiene: the FSA records rating 5, inspected 16 February 2026, with components 5, 5 and 0, where lower is better. ref
• Michelin: not recorded either way. Our cached Michelin data is stars only.

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff has no note on this one. The saved-places export carries an empty Note for the row, so jeff_note stays empty and nothing here is attributed to him. The master spreadsheet called it Ealing's cult Neapolitan, which was true of a room that closed in 2020, and it has been replaced by the fetched facts.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Angelo Ambrosio and Pasquale Chionchio had both worked London kitchens, decided Ealing needed a real Neapolitan pizzeria, built the room with their own hands and shipped the wood oven over from Italy. They opened on Valentine's Day 2010 with twenty-six covers, and Time Out named it London's best pizza two months later. Andy Hayler went that August and found a 400C oven turning a pizza in ninety seconds and a base that was soft and supple, which is the test. Read the address before you go, though: that room was on St Mary's Road, and in 2020 the business moved five hundred metres to Bond Street, where it was refurbished and reopened in August 2025. There are six Santa Marias in London now, and Harden's diners, who still call the pizza second to none and single out the slow-fermented dough, also say it is not rated as stratospherically as it once was. Order the Santa Caterina with the fresh chilli, or the marinara if you want to read the dough. The vegan pizzas are real pizzas.