ICCO Pizza – The £3.95 Pizza in Central London

Dear reader, when did you last buy anything in central London for £3.95? A coffee, perhaps, if you’re lucky and don’t ask for oat milk. A meal deal, at a push. But a freshly made, 12-inch pizza? Surely not. And yet, on Goodge Street – and now on Greek Street in Soho – that is exactly what ICCO Pizza has been quietly doing since 1999.

Fitzrovia team at Icco, Pizza counter at ICCO Pizza Soho

I’ll be honest with you. When I published my round-up of the Best Pizzerias in London, ICCO wasn’t on it. A little while later an email landed in my inbox from Shrief Kamel, ICCO’s Creative Director, very graciously pointing out the omission. No hard feelings, he said – they would just have to convince me they deserved a place on the next one. Well, I like a man who takes it on the chin, so I popped into the Soho branch to hear the story for myself.

From Giza to Goodge Street

Every good pizzeria has a story, and ICCO’s is a cracker. Founder Ashraf Kamel was born in Giza, Egypt, and came to London in search of opportunity. One of his early jobs was loading crates of soft drinks into a transit van and delivering them to cafés across the city. One of those cafés sat on the corner of Goodge Street and Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, and its owner was so impressed by Ashraf’s work ethic that he eventually offered him the business. In 1999, Ashraf took over, and The Italiano Coffee Company – ICCO – was born.

In those early days it was a neighbourhood café: coffee, pastries, soups and jacket potatoes, with pizza appearing rather quietly on the menu. It didn’t stay quiet for long. Students, office workers, builders, taxi drivers and night-shift Londoners soon discovered they could get a freshly made pizza for a price almost unheard of in central London, and word spread the old-fashioned way – by mouth, between bites.

Still Family-Run, 27 Years On

ICCO is very much a family affair, now in its second generation. Ashraf’s son Tamer has done every job in the building – from serving at the till and slicing pizzas to, yes, cleaning the toilets – and has led the business as CEO since 2010. Shrief, Ashraf’s nephew, learnt his trade as a pizza chef at ICCO, went off to run his own pizzerias in East London, and has now returned to the fold as Creative Director.

What struck me most, though, was the loyalty. Some of the team have been there for more than 20 years, and head chefs have been part of the business since 2001. You don’t get that kind of staying power in hospitality unless people are treated well. A second site followed in Camden in 2017, and the Soho branch on Greek Street has just celebrated its first birthday.

The £3.95 Question

Now, to the headline. At the time of our visit, a 12-inch pizza at ICCO started from just £3.95, with every pizza on the menu priced under a tenner. Prices have gone up only a handful of times since 1999. The business runs on small margins and high volume, which is why it proudly calls itself The People’s Pizzeria.

Which got me thinking. Strip a pizza back to its essentials and what have you actually got? Dough – flour, water, yeast and salt. A ladle of tomato. A handful of mozzarella. A scattering of toppings. Now, I’m not for a moment saying a great pizza is easy – getting the dough right takes skill and patience, and anyone who has tried it at home knows the oven makes all the difference. But when you see some pizzas in central London nudging £20, you do have to wonder how much of the price is pizza and how much is postcode.

ICCO’s answer is refreshingly simple: make it fresh, make it well, and charge a fair price for it. When I was in I ordered a pepperoni, it was very good and cost £7.50 which is great value for the area

ICCO Soho – The Atmosphere

You can’t miss the Soho branch. It sits on a corner of Greek Street with a bright green frontage, red chairs outside and an “Open Late” sign. And they mean it: at weekends, ICCO Soho stays open until 3am. That’s well past my bedtime, but music to the ears of anyone spilling out of a Soho theatre or bar with an appetite. Inside, it’s green and white tiles, steel-topped tables and a happy hum of people eating pizza. No frills, no fuss.

And here’s something I rather liked: you order from a person, not a screen. In an age of QR codes and self-service kiosks, ICCO has stuck with conversations across the counter, and the place is all the better for it.

Final Thoughts

ICCO isn’t trying to be a Mayfair restaurant, and that is exactly the point. There are no tasting menus, no sourdough starter with its own Instagram account – just a family who have spent 27 years serving honest, freshly made pizza at prices ordinary Londoners can afford. They are giving back, too, as the official sponsor of UCLH Charity’s “A Slice of Support” initiative.

In a city where eating out increasingly feels like a luxury, there is something genuinely heartening about that. So, has Shrief convinced me? Let’s just say I’m already thinking about the next list.