Tis’ time to be jolly. I have sent off my wish-list to Daddy Christmas – pending strike action from royal mail – and lined my fake fireplace with stockings deep enough and strong enough to hold the weight of a solid Leica camera. The festive lights are already up on Oxford street, and I’m already piling on the holiday pounds as every other night is yet another night of tableside firecrackers and paper crowns. I will have to reinstate my gym membership

As I was researching (some prefer to say wikipedia) the origins of Pizza, I stumbled across the valiant efforts of an organisation known as Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN) , or the Real Neopolitan Pizza Association. Obviously, they are non-profit and their goal is to preserve the ‘authenticity’ of restaurant pizza recipes around the world, and they do this by flying around the world, visiting restaurants either to rubber stamp or to reject pizzas. These guys have created a set of hardcore guidelines which only recognises Magherita and Marinara as true Neopolitan pizzas. They even have a very specific description of what the real thing ought to taste like, and I quote: (The pizza)… should be soft, elastic, easy to manipulate and fold…. Talk about Pizza police eh, I wonder if there are any VPN certified doughs in London… Franco

Established by a former restaurant manager, Giuseppe Turi in 1990, this little known family run Italian restaurant is just beyond the bridge in Putney and finds itself nestled on a handsome corner off the high street

We start with the long bus journey from Waterloo station (bus 77, 35 minutes) past Battersea and into Lavender Hill in search of the supposedly hidden gem of an Italian restaurant. And I’ll take this opportunity to address a topic that’s been brewing among the twitterati of late