Simon’s Quest is back after a short Christmas break. Tonight, I visited Pizza Mondo, a very popular pizza van that is constantly recommended in the Cambridge Foodies community.

You’ll have to forgive the photos in this review. Being the middle of January (at the time of writing), it is very cold and dark.

Pizza Mondo makes Neapolitan style pizzas. These are cooked in 60-90 seconds in their 450 degree wood fired pizza oven. All their dough is hand-made and hand stretched to order. The team likes to keep things simple by only using 4 ingredients in their dough and slow-rise flour to maximise flavour.

The menu

I ordered my pizza from their website before I left the house. It is really simple and easy to use, with zero faff. I highly recommend you do this too, to avoid disappointment, as every Pizza Mondo food van out that night sold out quite early.

The menu itself has around 8 pizzas, with gluten free options available. The Carne stood out as a particularly exciting pizza, so I decided to go for that one. It comes with Italian cured ham, salami, pepperoni, San Marzano tomato sauce and Fior Di Latte mozzarella (mozzarella made from cows milk rather than water buffalo).

You are given options to add extra toppings for £2. Ever since my visit to Oscar’s Pizza at the Blue Moon a few weeks ago, I have been obsessed with Ndjua – so I hit that bad boy ASAP! I also thought Ndjua would be a good way of testing their ingredient quality.

There is also an option for a side sauce for £2, perfect for dunking those big ol’ Neapolitan crusts. One particular sauce that caught my eye was the “Crust Dunker Bomba” which is made from roasted pepper, sun dried tomato sauce and loads of chilli – right up my street! 😎

Presentation

My first impression of the pizza was how small it was. It wasn’t tiny by any stretch of the imagination but was smaller than what I was expecting.

The pizza itself looked fantastic with deep red colours on the salami and nduja. The mozzarella was generously scattered across the pizza to create a thick creamy layer of soft cheese across the base.

Speaking of the base, it was lovely and soft with a nice thick crust that was perfect for dipping in the side sauce. There was a generous amount of tomato sauce that really gave the pizza a lovely deep ruby colour.

The flavour and ingredients

The ham was sublime and served in these big slices that covered large swathes of the pizza. The Ndjua was great and a million miles away from the rather lackluster Ndjua from Pizza Pilgrim. In fact, it wasn’t a huge step behind Oscar’s Lockdown Pizza, which till this very day, is the best I have had.

The tomato sauce was vibrant with a rich tomato flavour. In fact, it might be one of my favourite tomato sauces so far. Clearly, the San Marzano tomatoes are living up to their reputation. It really made the pizza extra succulent but this, coupled with the generous mozzarella portions, did result in my pizza toppings sliding off the base, making it hard to eat by the slice. I understand this is a common problem with pizzas and it can be a hard thing to get right in the cooking process. This is similar with what happened at Pizza Pilgrim but tonight was not as watery. Instead, it was a thick layer of delicious sauce. Messy fun!

Conclusion

For a total of £17, I got a slightly small but delicious, bold and beautiful looking pizza with a lovely soft and fluffy pizza base. The ingredients were all good quality and the side sauce that came with it really complimented the large Neapolitan style pizzas crusts. The tomato sauce had such a vivid flavour that really stole the show.

One of the stand out things about my experience ordering from Pizza Mondo tonight was the team. They were chatty, friendly and genuine. As a result, the 60-90 seconds I had to wait for my pizza just flew by 🤣

I knew I would love Pizza Mondo. The Cambridge Foodies in our community are never wrong!

But where to put them on my Simon’s Quest pizza ranking?

That’s a tough one! 🤔

Thanks for reading!