PIZZERIA MAMA

The first thing to catch your eye at Pizzeria MAMA might be a tree. The windows come down to the floor, and the branches are close enough to study over lunch. Inside, little brass lamps stand on dark wooden tables beneath the exposed rafters. Then a pizza comes out of the oven, its rim puffed and freckled black, and the tree has some competition.

The building once served as a holiday retreat for Hankyu Railway employees and their families. The pizzeria opened in December 2020, ahead of the ten-room hotel it now shares the house with. There’s something pleasing about that order of events. Before anyone could spend the night, the neighbours could come round for dinner.

The dough is made with Japanese-grown wheat and baked over a wood fire. A margherita makes a perfectly good case for stopping there, though MAMA’s shiso pizza makes ordering just one feel like a tactical error. It comes with a generous tangle of Kujo spring onions and shirasu, tiny whitebait that bring a little salt to all that green. Another combination the kitchen has served puts Manganji red peppers and garlic from Fukuchiyama on an oil base. It’s a particularly agreeable way to get acquainted with Kyoto produce.

There’s pasta, too, and a menu that moves with the season. You could order very sensibly here. Then again, the person who proposes sharing a second pizza is usually the one who gets thanked.