Best Pizza in Manchester

There was a time when pizza in Manchester was mostly associated with sofa deliveries, Friday nights, and the times you’ve found yourself staring at a takeaway menu contemplating that difficult decision of whether ordering one more garlic dip was a sensible use of your money. 

Things have changed dramatically. 

Every few months, another pizza place seems to arrive with a completely different idea of what pizza should be. One is obsessing over fermentation. Another is serving slices that barely fit on the table. Somebody else has decided traditional toppings are more of a suggestion than a rule. 

And Manchester is all the better for it. 

What was once a fairly straightforward food category has become one of the city’s most exciting. Competition has pushed standards through the roof, new openings keep raising the bar and Mancunians now have more excellent pizza than they can realistically eat in a year 

These are some of our favourites. 

Rudy’s 

It’s difficult to overstate how much Rudy’s has done for Manchester’s pizza scene. 

When the first site opened in Ancoats back in 2015, most people weren’t discussing hydration levels in dough or debating which neighbourhood served the city’s best Neapolitan pizza. Rudy’s turned those conversations into a normal pastime. 

More than a decade on, the queues haven’t disappeared. Manchester’s pizza scene may look completely different. Rudy’s place in it doesn’t. 

There’s a reason it still appears in virtually every Manchester pizza discussion. Eight sites later and we’re still refreshing their socials in the hope the next opening lands somewhere closer to home. 

The fennel sausage pizza is still one of the best things on the menu, the leopard-spotted crusts remain beautifully light and the first slice still folds under its own weight exactly as it should. 

There are Rudy’s all over Manchester now. This is still the pilgrimage. 

Double Zero 

Nobody really recommends Double Zero anymore. There’s always someone who insists you haven’t had proper pizza until you’ve been.

You’d never guess Britain’s best pizza had already been here all along. 

The menu’s full of pizzas you’ve seen a hundred times before. Double Zero cooks them as well as just about anybody in the country. The toppings don’t need to be unusual when every base arrives beautifully blistered, every crust carries that unmistakable leopard spotting and every pizza gets its finishing dusting of Parmesan before it reaches the table, with proper fior di latte instead of shredded mozzarella. 

Finding a favourite at Double Zero is easy. Talking yourself into ordering something else next time is near enough impossible. 

Even people who can eat gluten happily order the gluten-free pizza here. You don’t hear that very often. 

The award simply caught everyone else up. 

Sooner or later, everybody ends up at Double Zero. 

Nell’s 

For a city that spent years falling in love with Neapolitan pizza, Manchester has shown a surprising amount of affection for slices the size of a small child. 

That’s largely Nell’s fault. 

While much of the city’s pizza scene was looking towards Naples, Nell’s headed straight for New York. Giant slices quickly became its calling card, but Nell’s real achievement was turning one of New York’s most iconic food traditions into something that felt completely at home in Manchester. 

The look on neighbouring tables’ faces when the 22-inch pizzas arrive truly will never get old. 

More importantly, though, Nell’s brought an entirely different style of pizza culture to Manchester. It’s every bit as much a social destination as it is a pizzeria, proving there was plenty of room in the city for fantastic New York slices. 

Forbici 

Most pizza restaurants will tell you their dough is special. Forbici built an entire concept around proving it. No exaggeration required here, they’re more than equipped to substantiate the claim. 

The team brought master bakers over from Naples and developed what they boldly describe as the world’s most powerful pizza dough. The process is treated with almost scientific precision, from the carefully controlled proofing to the premium flour used throughout. Then, just to make sure you know this isn’t quite like everywhere else, your pizza arrives ready to be cut with scissors. It’s always those small details that count the most, but it does make you feel slightly underdressed for lunch.

For all the technical detail and their excellence in nailing the classics, Forbici isn’t afraid to have some fun either. Alongside traditional Italian ingredients sit creations inspired by Manchester and the North West, including a Lancashire Hotpot pizza that feels like something a homesick Northerner would dream up after moving to the Amalfi Coast. 

Gatto 

Getting to Gatto late isn’t brave. It’s optimistic. 

They weren’t joking when they said “until sell out”. 

Three days making the dough means there’s not much they can do for everyone who suddenly decides they fancy pizza after work. 

The menu doesn’t exactly overwhelm you either. Four pizzas. One monthly special. That’s your lot. Somewhere else, that might feel like slim pickings. Here, it just feels like somebody’s already done the hard work for you. Pepperoni with those ridiculous little crispy cups. Vodka sauce and sausage. A Margherita that reminds you why it’s still on every pizza menu in the world. Four very good ideas are apparently plenty. 

Then there’s the crust. 

Manchester’s spent the last decade happily folding floppy Neapolitan slices in half. Gatto looked at all that, nodded politely and carried on making slices that never needed rescuing halfway to your mouth. Seventy-two hours of fermentation produces a proper New York-style crunch that holds together from first bite to last, without ever becoming heavy. 

Miss it once and you’ll never risk turning up late again. 

Ramona 

Ramona might be one of the few places in Manchester where the pizza is both the main attraction and almost beside the point. 

Not because the pizza got worse. Quite the opposite. 

The pizzas deserve all of the plaudits they receive. Thick, airy bases with crispy cheese around the edges introduced many Mancunians to Detroit-style pizza for the first time, helping establish a style that felt completely different from the Neapolitan pizzas dominating much of the city. 

Of course, the pizza is only a slice of the story now. Margarita cocktails, some of Manchester’s most skilled and respected DJs and an atmosphere that somehow feels equally suited to a grey February evening by the firepit as it does a sun-soaked summer Saturday have helped turn Ramona into one of Manchester’s genuine institutions. 

The pizza may have started the conversation, but it hasn’t been carrying it alone for quite some time. 

Crazy Pedro’s

Manchester’s pizza scene occasionally has a habit of disappearing up its own mozzarella-filled backside. Crazy Pedro’s has spent years making sure that doesn’t happen. 

While everyone else was discussing authenticity, Pedro’s was busy putting the sort of toppings on pizza that sound like they were suggested as a joke and then somehow made it onto the menu. That’s exactly why people love it. The whole place feels like a reminder that pizza is supposed to be fun. Not every topping needs approval from somebody’s Italian grandmother. 

Long before hot honey became fashionable and every menu needed a backstory, Pedro’s was happily doing its own thing. Manchester’s pizza scene is better for having places that take dough seriously. It’s also better for having one that occasionally asks what would happen if somebody put something completely ridiculous on top of it. 

Soap Street Pizza 

The best pizza at Soap Street doesn’t have tomato on it. 

No, we didn’t think we’d be writing that sentence either, but stick with us for a minute before you close this tab. 

Soap Street’s white pizzas are where the whole idea finally makes sense. Without a layer of tomato softening everything underneath, that low-and-slow base gets to show off properly. The result is a crust that’s impossibly crisp from edge to edge, while toppings like creamy leek soubise, smoked scamorza, stracciatella, lemon zest and caramelised leeks finally give that impossibly crisp base the stage it deserves. 

But please do yourself a favour and order The White One first. It’ll save somebody else on the table telling you they wish you had. 

Of course, Frankie’s fennel sausage ragu and the Spicy Vodka Pie are brilliant too. Soap Street just happens to be one of the very few places where we’d happily tell you to ignore them on your first visit. 

The jalapeño ranch is worth the extra couple of quid alone. You’ll stop treating the crust like something to get through and start treating it like the best bit of the pizza. 

Of course they’ve got a Margherita. Imagine the grief they’d get if they hadn’t. But the white pizzas are the real reason you’d come back.