We usually wait until a new restaurant has gone through their teething problems before we step over their newly polished door step. But we threw out the rule book when it came to Sodo Pizza Cafe who opened on Friday, just a couple of minutes walk from our home. They’ve refurbished an old warehouse building on Hatherley Mews behind the old Granada Cinema that used to be La Ruana Colombian restaurant, aka The Grove Cafe during the day. They’ve knocked down walls, created big windows to let in the light and got rid of the dodgy polystyrene ceiling tiles to create an industrial-styled 45 seater restaurant.

As expected it was still being finished; apparently it took four days to install the pizza oven, the heating needs sorting and the excellent Nude Americano (£2) arrived in a paper cup … but the pizzas are great. They brought their sourdough starter over from their other restaurant in Clapton, but it didn’t like the change so apparently it will be at optimium performance in a few weeks. The dough is fermented for 48 hours then baked at over 450°C. As a gluten free alternative they offer the pizza toppings on cannellini beans baked in the oven. Over the next few weeks they will hopefully also be serving brunch at weekends.

We went for the Winter Goat pizza (£8) and loved the combination of the goat’s and mozzarella cheeses with the toasted walnuts, caramelised onions and black olives. Our chosen meaty option was the surprisingly light Cured Meat pizza (£10) – salami Napoli, salami Calabressi and Parma ham with fresh green chilli. They promise to have their homemade chilli oil ready soon to add some extra heat. Drinks include a range of London craft beers and natural wines.

The choice of antipasti, salads, Nocellara olives and creamy Burratina mozarella make delicious starters or sides, but I hope they’ll start using E17 OrganicLea salad leaves rather than the Hackney Growing Communites salad soon.