Stretch Pizza, Hull review: Former street food pop-up could be serving Yorkshire's best pizza after move to Victorian arcade

Then things got serious. Several people I knew (and who’s judgement I trust) started saying that Stretch Pizza were making the Best Pizza Ever. Note those capital letters. They are never employed unless the situation is serious. The jungle drums had reached a crescendo and I knew I had to seek Stretch out with all haste.

As fortune would have it, Stretch Pizza had just found themselves a permanent base, so I didn’t need to worry about where they may next emerge. All I had to do was head to the nascent Foodie Central of Hull - Paragon Arcade – where Stretch has taken over two units to create a new 30-ish seater restaurant and takeaway.

Here is where you will find Jason Nichols, a former hospitality trainer for a major food chain who took the opportunity afforded by lockdowns and furlough to follow his passion for pizza-making and create his own mobile catering company. Jason has a penchant (as do I) for traditional Neapolitan pizza, which demands a specific flour in the dough, hand kneading and a wood-fired oven heated to exactly 485 degrees Celsius. He practised his pizza procedure at home, perfected at pop-ups and then built a very impressive oven when he took up residency in the arcade.

As well as pizza, Stretch offers a short but sweet menu of other Italian treats. We should take a quick spin through these before reaching a firm opinion on the main event.

There are starters and sides - such as olives and bocconcini and various garlic breads - the best of which is the bocconcini caprese salad. A simple enough bowl of little mozzarella balls, rocket and cherry tomatoes sprinkled with balsamic and pepper that will satisfy those who eschew dough in favour of a relatively light lunch.

Better (and more substantial) are the panozzi. A traditional Campanian sandwich made with folded pizza dough. A bit like a calzone except the filling is added after the dough comes out of the oven, rather than before. Stretch offer four versions of panuozzo – cheese (Naploatano), tuna (tonno), veggie (truffle funghi) and, the one I like most, tre carne. Fior di latte cheese, Napoli salami, n’duja, prosciutto crudo and rocket are all packed into a foot long pocket of just-cooked pizza dough.

I bought one on a sunny afternoon and took it with me to enjoy on a bench under the statue in Queen Victoria Square. It was authentic, crunchy, hearty and superbly tasty. So much better than a sandwich made with either bread, flatbread or pitta. The last time I had one was from a street stall just by the entrance to Pompeii, where I sat and ate it while gazing at views of both the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius. This one is every bit as enjoyable, even if the scenery was marginally less spectacular.

The panuozzo also demonstrate that Jason’s dough is very, very, good. Possibly even very, very, very. The only water-tight test is to order pizza. I took my kids for an early evening tasting session – both of them, as they are, convinced they’re the ultimate arbiters of pizza-worthiness. All of the options feature San Marzano tomatoes and fior de latte cheese, both further Neapolitan pizza requirements. My daughter - believing herself impervious to chillies - went for diavolo; which adds basil, salami, n’duja and chillies to the mix. She loved it. She didn’t baulk at the heat but she did snaffle the entire thing in near-record speed. Two thumbs up from the lass. The lad, always the more cautious sibling, played it safe with a margherita and I went with a pepperoni. Four more thumbs up.

There’s a real vitality to Stretch pizzas. They’re stretched, topped, cooked and laid in front of you within five minutes. The base and crust are as near to perfect as I’ve ever tasted and the toppings are so well-sourced and sparingly-used they neither overwhelm the base or lead to unwelcome sogginess. I hereby state that Jason Nichols undeniably knows how to make authentic Neapolitan pizza.

Plenty of lives were changed forever by the pandemic. Some for the worse, but Jason’s was definitely changed for the better. He took an unexpected opportunity to take a passion and (in the words of Irene Cara) make it happen. The kitchen in his new restaurant has a look of a craftsman’s studio. There are large windows in the ceiling to let lots of light in. You can imagine a painter or a cobbler plying their trade in there a hundred or more years ago. Now there is a very different kind of artisan plying his trade in the same space. And filling many hungry bellies while about it.

Do Stretch make the best pizzas ever? Quite possibly. They have certainly gone straight to the apex of my personal East Yorkshire top 10 and probably come up to the standard of many of the pizzas in actual Naples. Clearly, there’s really no other option, I’ll just have to go back there soon to make an official comparison.

Stretch Pizza, 5-6 Paragon Arcade, Paragon Street, Hull, HU17 0AA, www.stretchpizza.co.uk, open 11.30am to 9pm every day except Monday.