Our Story

The Beginning

It all began with Ulysses… our little boy was conceived somewhere around November 2012. Back then Awet and I were running a small food stall in Camden Town and it soon became obvious that that lifestyle was not going to work for us. 

We needed something easy peasy, a 9 to 5 type of activity that could have given us the luxury of spending time with our little angel.

A-ah! What better than a little coffee shop in our local community in Bow? There was nobody else there, and if I was myself willing to drive to Victoria Park to enjoy my Saturday morning moka, surely others must have had the same need! Plus, it didn't look particularly difficult to set up and run… 

What a mistake! We were immediately successful, open from 6 am to 9 pm and with no breaks whatsoever! Luckily, the business was good enough to employ a couple of people, and all in all we managed. 

New Developments

Ulysses was Christened in May 2014. It was in those days that we spotted our neighbour emptying the shop that later would become our first The Pizza Room. 

Our lovely coffee shop was way too small to cook proper meals and offer the range we wanted. We needed another place to open a restaurant and that seemed the perfect solution.

Easier said than done. Most of our friends and family told us that we were making a mistake. We should have opened another coffee shop, in another area, not a completely new business. 

My gut told me to go ahead. Yes, it is true that we had experience in a coffee shop, but we also had experience in the location. This was our neighbourhood and it needed more shops. 

Why pizza? Well, this shop was also very small, and we could not physically make more than one clear item. Artisan Pizza was clearly missing from the scene and, as for the coffee, I wanted a good pizza in the neighbourhood!

From 2 to 20

The Pizza Room was immediately loved by all. It wasn’t easy. A small toddler, very little money, a plethora of problems. It has been so stressful that I developed auto immune conditions. 

But hey, chi non risica non rosica, we say in Italy!