Wood-fired pizza in Sharm: how to spot the real thing

Almost every menu in Sharm says "wood-fired". Not everyone has one, and the difference shows before you taste anything.

1. The crust

A wood oven runs hotter than most restaurant electric ovens ever reach. That gives you a puffed, uneven rim with scattered dark blisters. A perfectly even golden edge is almost always electric.

2. The underside

Lift a slice and look at the base. Stone leaves irregular dark patches. A uniformly biscuit-coloured bottom came off a tray.

3. The timing

A wood-oven pizza is out in about two minutes. If yours arrives twenty minutes after ordering, alongside the main courses from the next table, it went through a different kind of oven.

4. The dough, the next morning

This one is about the dough rather than the oven: a long prove digests easily, a short one doesn't. If you wake up thirsty, you know what happened.

Ours is a wood oven and the dough is proved long, every day. A Margherita is 350 EGP before the 14% VAT — and the fastest way to judge any of this is to order one.