Sub Rosa Pizza
Castlemilk, Glasgow
The irony about Sub Rosa being so hip, happening and hey-kids underground is the fact it’s actually overground. Up a ramp, along a long weird corridor, behind an unmarked door.
Of course, we don’t know any of this as we blunder around a closed-for-the-weekend industrial estate on the far edge of Castlemilk.
First, peering past a doggy care place, then driving a long way to the other side of a truly vast and unwelcoming building and now edging into a fire station car park.
Dang. Where is this restaurant?
Mr Google just dumps a very unhelpful dot in the middle of that endless sprawling building with no obvious entrance and pisses right off. No signs for Sub Rosa either.
In the end, we phone. “Walk under the ramp (car ramp we saw somewhere a long time ago), up the stairs, along the corridor and it’s no 34," comes the instruction.
Then No 34 appears. Surely this isn’t it? We pause, we push, we open.
Mamma Mia. Checked tablecloths, Frank Wilson spreading his warm, welcoming Motown arms around the sound system, Do I Love You, massaging our ears.
Look, a pizza oven. Electric. Four tables. Eclectic. Two men running the place. One of them now approaching and saying: did you book?
Uh, it’s 4.45pm in the afternoon, I’m thinking. “Hmm, er, ah,” (man leaves to consult a booking list), then returns saying. “I can give you 45 minutes til we need the table back”.
Will we get our pizza finished in 45 minutes, I wonder. “Yep,” is the answer. Let’s go then.
In Sub Rosa, in 2025, in Glasgow, it’s from Detroit. Or so the menu says. I will see these Detroit style pizzas in square pans, servings for two, on the counter, think focaccia, and I will later ask what they are: “That’s the sharers, we were testing,” I’ll be told. But by then we will know (it’s not even 5pm by the way) that they have all been apparently sold out before we even arrived.
Sheesh. How’s that happened when you have just opened, I ask. “Bookings mate,” I’ll be told.
I’ll phone tomorrow as well. Bang on 4.30pm (nobody answers the phone earlier) to book one Detroit Sharer to collect. “Sold out,” I’ll be told again. Hmmm. Anyways, as they say in Detroit.
It’s not all the big mammas of the pizza world they sell here. There are the round pizzas too. And that’s what we are now having tonight.
They do have side dishes - unfiltered EV olive oil on hunks of Buffalo Burrata, Nocerella Olives and…very American this... dips for your pizza crust. We blank these.
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The pizzas themselves come in two options; Bianco or Rosa. We’ll be having one of each. Watching the man take a dried bundle of oregano, tied with a string, and shaking it over each pizza after it comes from that oven.
These pizzas? Not exactly normal. Obligatory topping for the rosa is: Fior Di Latte, San Marzano toms; 24-month parmesan, that unfiltered EV and oregano. To that I add pepperoni from the extras list.
Debs has the Bianco, same ingredients, no tomato obviously, but with Sorrento Lemon (uh?). And cracked black peppercorn. She picks shaved Spanish onion as an extra.
These arrive, and reasonably fast, in the meantime we sat and looked around, hearing customers for another table knocking on the door outside, and waiting awkwardly out there, and I wonder if Sub Rosa could be a bit less subversive.
Get Ron's review two whole days before it appears anywhere else.
And yet? Pizzas from an electric oven. Took way, way longer to cook than they would have with a wood-fired, yet are indeed well fired, dough knocking righteously at the bottom, fired completely correctly the whole way through. Slightly salty dough, which is bold and to be applauded as it just adds to the taste profile. I like this base before I even get to the topping, but then it’s genuinely sweet and juicy San Marzano tomatoes, a zing from the oregano, and a savoury belt in the chops from the cheeses.
The real revelation though is the Bianco, with that super savoury salted lemon hit. We both pause. Try it again. Say: who would have thought?… and enjoy.
Sub Rosa. They don’t make it easy. But they do make it well.
Unit 34, Enterprise Park, 147 Drakemire Drive, Glasgow G45 9SA
Open from 4.30pm but check website for days
Menu: It’s pizza folks, but this time mainly from Detroit and with wholesome proper ingredients, a few ooft-toppings and a hand-knitted, box-fresh buzz. 3/5
Service: Shoestring operation, one man out front, another on oven, only adds to the special experience buzz. Plus Motown toons. 5/5
Atmosphere: It’s the surprise when you open the door and walk into a secret-cantina that gives it the gloss. Great fun. 5/5
Price: Those mystery Detroits are £28, those round pizzas are £13 with extra toppings from £1.50. Worth it. 3/5
Food: Yet to get a hold of an actual Detroit style but the two pizzas we had were both well fired, carefully made, slightly different and full of flavour. 8/10
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