How far would you go for a pizza? Brixton? Shoreditch? Notting Hill Gate? Los Angeles? Until recently I would have answered, “No,” “No,” “No,” and, “Ye Gods, man, are you having a laugh?”

I have been a really quite assiduous carb-dodger since my mid-thirties. I am afraid there is simply no other way for me, in this job, to control my weight. And I mean “control”. I don’t mean “keep myself hound-lean, hard-bodied and dangerous” (I wish). I mean that by not eating simple carbohydrates I can just about avoid exploding into one of those people you see in jumpsuits on the high street, looking like a half-inflated hot-air balloon, swaying and wheezing, and not having any defined shape at all. Having only volume.

I half-believe the Atkins ketosis theories, I half-believe the blood-group carb-response theories, I certainly believe the calorific reduction theories, but most of all I know myself. I know how I respond to any easy fix, of anything. White starch that turns straight to sugar in your blood and makes you feel like you can fly is something I have to turn away from. The high lasts ten minutes and the only way back is more: a rollercoaster sugar-spike ride for the rest of the day, keeping topped up with Snickers bars and short naps and toasted cheese sandwiches until the pizza joint reopens at 6 and… helloooooo, elasticated waistbands.

And so pizza is just one of those things, along with white bread, potatoes, rice and pasta, that just doesn’t really feature in my life any more. Hard drugs, drunk-driving and teenage hookers, yes. But stodge, no way.

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And the loos, man! Saints alive, at prices like this you can’t give punters an old pub lavvy

Giles Coren

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It’s a truly staggering place to sit and eat, however you look at it

Giles Coren

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And, anyway, pizza to me has always just been pizza. No big deal. I ate a great pizza once in Rome, at Da Baffetto. And I ate a very disappointing “world-famous breakfast pizza” at the Big Sur Bakery in California (pizza for breakfast may well be the secret of America’s staggering success in pushing the boundaries of obesity these last 50-odd years). But apart from that I have no great pizza tales. No great interest.

And then suddenly London goes pizza crazy. Franco Manca opens in Brixton to roars of approval, and Portobello Ristorante Pizzeria wins the “most fun restaurant” award at the London Restaurant Festival Awards, and Nick Jones opens Pizza East in Shoreditch, and suddenly 2009 is the year of the pizza and I start thinking: oh, crud, I’m going to have to bite the bullet.

Franco Manca I had been meaning to get down to for ages. It sounds stunning: a genuine Neapolitan brick oven shipped in from (duh) Naples, a cheese-maker flown in from Sorrento to train their supplier, humble and dirt-cheap but bustling and friendly and the best pizzas anyone who writes about it has ever eaten. It’s just, there’s never really a good time for me to go to Brixton. You can’t book, it’s daytime only, and I have a job to do, I can’t just bog off at lunchtime and spend two hours on the Tube for a slab of pizza, however good (though I will go specially one day soon, and report back, I promise).

I can bog off to Notting Hill Gate, though, just, in the car: 20 minutes’ drive, eat, 20 minutes back. And I did. And it was wonderful. It won the “most fun” award from a panel of judges that included me, without my having been there (so easily browbeaten am I by my fellow critics), but it was the right choice.

It’s bright, light, airy, friendly, simply designed and the staff are all enthusiastic and happy. The menu is wide-ranging and appealing and the pizzas are long and hot and good and come by the half-metre, with the opportunity to change toppings every quarter-metre. They rack it up on a shelf that hovers above the table, there are bowls of chilli flakes and good salads and it’s all just tickety-boo. We had a stonking pizza pie to start and then got stuck two thirds of the way through our half-metre, leaving about a third of a quarter of each half – you do the maths (please) – to bring home in a doggy box.

But you know me and carbs (well, you do now). Last night I crept down in the dark to guzzle one of the doggy slices, hunched furtively in the larder – couldn’t help myself – and in the morning I was two pounds heavier than target-usual.

Hang on, I only had one slice last night. That means there are two slices left. I’m just going to nip downstairs and, er, check the back door’s closed…

…Right, yes, that’s fine, all closed, now where, nomchnomchnomch, was I? Oh yes, smack, smack, wipe, nomchnomchnomch, I was saying how I have a bit of a problem with not eating carbs if they are at hand. I mean, it’s not like I’ve just been down and eaten a slice of cold capricciosa or anything, all lovely and smooth and larder-temperature, a half slice of sausage, a ring of olive, a sliver of ’shroom and that thin base, quite damp and flannelly now but still unctuous with mature, overnight wheat flavours.

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