Italy is one of the places I have yet to visit, I’m hoping to get to Rome next year, but in the mean time I will need to satisfy myself with the stone baked pizza available here in Edinburgh. I recently visited Dough which I was very impressed with. This time I headed down to La Favorita on Leith Walk to try out the pizza there.

The vibe at La Favorita is definitely ‘buzzy pizzeria’ – it was jammed with families enjoying eating out together. We had taken our daughter with us so we were very much road testing it as a family place to eat.

The menu had plenty of choice and there was also a Prosecco & Pizza deal, but we decided to dine family style and pick a few things to share.

We started with Arancini Al Taleggio E Pesto Genovese – deep fried balls of risotto stuffed with taleggio with a tomato dipping sauce. One each was enough to whet our appetite for our pizzas.

We ordered two pizzas from the ‘Something Different’ section. La Braceria sounded similar to our favourite one from a large pizza chain which shares its name with a popular table game. I love pizza with BBQ sauce, I know it’s probably sacrilege in Italy, but we like what we like.

Emilla Romagna is a rectangular pizza (although it came round?) with a bolgnese sauce and salami and was another nice twist on the traditional.

To go with the pizzas we ordered a couple of sides, Insalata Verde, and some Potato & Truffle Wedges – because I find anything with truffle difficult to resist!.

We’d kept some space for dessert, which was just as well as they had one of our favourites, Dark Chocolate Gnocchi. If you haven’t tried these little balls stuffed with dark chocolate and hazelnuts, you really should.

Overall we really enjoyed La Favorita, if you’re looking for a ‘quiet’ meal this is probably not the place, but if you want great food that’s family friendly, I’d highly recommend it.

La Favorita
Location: 325-331 Leith Walk
Price: Pizzas £8.75 – £15.95
Good for: Pizzas and Dark Chocolate Gnocchi