Forma: Pizza Between the Pages

Most pizza places don’t share an address with a library. Forma sits within Al Safa Art & Design Library on Al Wasl Road, and it takes its cue from the building: creative, considered and in no hurry.

The menu is short and built around pizza, with small plates, specialty coffee and desserts alongside. It works for breakfast, a slow lunch or a casual dinner, with seating indoors and out.

The library sets the tone. Books and artwork are placed through the space as a natural extension of the building rather than as decoration. Forma reads as part of the cultural complex it sits in, a café-restaurant for people who like their surroundings to have something to say.

Music, fashion and colour shape the design, giving the room a playful energy against the calm of the library. At its centre is a mosaic-tiled oven, which works both as the kitchen’s engine and as the room’s focal point. Outdoor seating adds a quieter option on cooler days.

Forma’s pizza is thin crust, flaky and crunchy, built on a well-balanced dough. The pepperoni is the signature, loaded well beyond the usual. The truffle pizza is the best seller, and the miso corn is the kitchen at its most inventive. Classics such as the margherita round out a short, focused list.

Forma opens at 8am, and breakfast dishes such as eggs and shakshuka run until 4pm. Coffee carries through the day, with V60, cascara and matcha latte on the list, alongside house refreshers like hibiscus watermelon and the signature FORMatcha. The table can stretch easily from a morning coffee into a full meal.