Your choice of Pizza

♦ Eimsbüttel : ITALIAN ♦ Sternschanze: HIPSTER ♦

♦ Ottensen: INNOVATIVE-INDUSTRIAL ♦

This hanseatic town has delicious and different types of pizza to offer.  Lots of classical Italian, but also innovative, creative and the build-your-own kind.  Below are my three favorite pizzerias to go to – they all differ quite a lot from each other.  It really depends on where you are, who you’re going with, and what you feel like eating to decide which one you opt for.

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Piazza Trapani 

This is a genuine Italian pizzeria in the heart of Eimsbüttel, owned by a sicilian-german couple.  It’s the place to get delicious, thin crust, Italian style pizza.  Choose from a variety of toppings and three different sizes.  Their daily menu usually offers 5-6 more dishes, amongst them amazing home made pasta.  The service is super nice, humorous and accommodating, and you can spend a long evening at Trapani without feeling rushed.  Don’t be shy to ask for an ingredient that might not be on the menu … like spinach.  Well that used to not be on the menu, now it is, I wonder why 🙂  I’m a huge garlic fan, but here, instead of baking it on top, I add it from the garlic oil (they also have chili oil), which they will happily add to your table.

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the family-owned Italian

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I’ve had phases where I went here every week, and extra ordered more to take home leftovers.  Actually my friends asked me where I got the pizza from, because it smelled and tasted so good. Always friendly, low-key and never disappointing!

Eppendorfer Weg 89, 20259 – daily from 16:00

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 Slim Jims

“Eat Pizza and Stay Nice!”

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the hipster one of ☆Schanze

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The creative, but hip, alternative pizzeria in the Schanze.  They fill up quickly in the evenings.  Similar to Trapani, you can assemble your own thin crust pizza, but that’s the end of what they have in common.  Ingredients are listed on a big chalkboard: lots of meats, goat-, cow-, sheep-, but also vegan cheese, antipasti, arugula+balsamico…  Every month they create a specialty pizza with more peculiar ingredients such as orange, ground beef, or carrots.  The atmosphere is very casual, well like in the Schanze.  You order at the counter where you can also see the pizza being made (which often takes a while).  Seating is inventive, if not plentiful, family style at wooden tables, or on the windowsill, cushioned as seats and paired with high tables.

Das Mehl (CURRENTLY CLOSED)

“You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy pizza, and that’s kind of the same thing.” — Das Mehl

I never heard of this place, till I read an article in the NEON about a couple that traveled to Hamburg specifically to try pizza from Das Mehl.  So I finally found my way to this innovative peaceful spot, hidden in a courtyard of Ottensen.  In the summer there’s lots of nice outside seating in front of the old brick building.  The interior has an industrial and vintage feel: large rooms,tables of all sizes, wooden, metal, concrete furniture and an old vaulting horse just standing around.  If you look at the opening times (till 1 or 3 AM) don’t get confused .  That’s for the nice bar right in the front. Now to the food!  (which is served till 10PM)  There’s not many choices, but still too many.

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the innovative with industrial dining

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Homemade lemonades, cocktails, a couple craft beers and lots of customers seemed to like the wines as well. Antipasti with soft home-baked bread. And pizza! Some doughs are black, made with squid ink.  Plain old tomato sauce doesn’t exist… the closest it gets is white tomato sauce (I didn’t know white tomatoes existed), or a thickened spicy onion-tomato sauce.  Other bases are lemon-mascarpone-ricotta-cream for example, topped with rhubarb, red beet, fresh salad or lard.  The toppings of the Marktlage pizza depends on the season, such as asparagus in April.  So they change the menu quite often.  The only dessert; mousse au chocolate.  It’s served by the scoop, out of a large common serving bowl. But unfortunately we only got to watch the others have it, by the time we were done all was gone 🙁  It must have been good.

Gaußstraße 190 (Ottensen) – in a coutryard next to the Thalia Theater –– Mo-Th: 17:30-1AM, Fr-Su: 17:30-3AM (CURRENTLY CLOSED)