It’s early evening on Stainbeck Road and Culto, Meanwood’s long-running pizzeria, is quiet. But it doesn’t stay that way for long. Claire Atkinson, the mother of one of Culto’s waitresses, arrives, and she’s here to make a scene.
As two elderly diners look on, astonished, she demands that the restaurant’s director, Alfio Trovato, come out to explain why 17-year-old Ruby has around £100 missing from her July paycheque.
It’s not just this month. Ruby and a fellow waitress have been underpaid before, each time having to argue for their full wages — and they never see any of the staff tips, Claire says. Not only that, but after Ruby asked Alfio for her full pay earlier this evening, he fired her.
Alfio starts waving timesheets about, saying he’ll check the record, and tries to usher Claire into an office, but she’s having none of it. She’s talking “very very nicely,” she says, but she’s fired up and won’t leave until Ruby and the other waitress have their pay, right now.
She leaves clutching the missing cash. But she’s not done. When she gets home, she takes straight to TikTok. That was last Friday — by now, the video has racked up more than 100,000 views, and is the talk of the Meanwood Community Chat Facebook group.
By the time I get to Meanwood the following Tuesday, the word is everywhere. When I pop into nearby pubs and cafes, I don’t have to explain why I’m interested in Culto. But as I continued to dig into what was once revered among the best pizza joints in the city, more and more strange details emerge.
That’s today’s story. Getting to the bottom of it took Mia a full week and a half, which is why we’ve put it behind a paywall. There’s no two ways about it: proper journalism costs money to do, which is why we will always insist that it’s worth paying for. Grab a subscription now to read the rest.
But first, it’s your round up.
The round up:
🟢 A member of the Green Party in Leeds has quit amid turmoil amongst the party. On Monday, we brought you news of in-fighting relating to special responsibility allowances (SRAs). Now, George Müller-Waite, who was described as the Green Party councillor candidate for Little London and Woodhouse by Yorkshire Voice last December before Councillor Eden Hills was officially anointed in March and went on to win the seat, has gone out in a blaze of glory. It began with a statement on allegations he had assaulted another Green Party member which he declared “a complete fabrication for factional reasons” and was followed up a day later with his resignation. Müller-Waite has promised a post per day “until there are either resignations or I run through all my evidence”. Anyone who knows anything about what on earth is going on with the Greens in Leeds, please do get in touch at: editor@theexchange.news.
🚨 On the other side of the political spectrum, a Bradford Reform councillor was arrested at the weekend after a bust-up in a pub. West Yorkshire Police said in a statement sent to The Exchange that a call was made at around 10.30pm on Saturday about an “ongoing fight involving several men and women” at a drinking hole on Manchester Road, Bradford (understood to be The Woodman Inn). A woman suffered facial injuries and two people were arrested. One of those was Wibsey and Odsal Ward councillor, Jason Mark Townend, Reform confirmed to the Telegraph & Argus. Both were released on police bail pending continuing investigations. The Greens in Bradford have jumped on the news for a spot of point scoring.
🏊♀️A “protest swim” at Leeds Dock yesterday could become a regular event, organisers told The Exchange. Paul Chatterton said that around 50 swimmers showed up for Tuesday evening’s (unauthorised) dip. “It went really well,” he told us. “It was really peaceful, it was relaxed.” They’re calling for the reinstatement of the former open water swimming licence. The dock’s interim leaseholders, Interpath, have declined to renew a licence with Love Open Water, which used to manage the whole initiative. Interpath cite safety reasons, saying the swimming “is no longer considered viable under current circumstances.” Future owners of the site might consider it, though, Interpath say. In the meantime, the swimmers hope to carry on testing the water — if you’ll excuse the pun — as “less of a protest now, more just meeting community needs,” Chatterton said.
How Leeds’ best pizzeria was ransacked by its former owners
By Mia Jankowicz
A front-of-house manager greets me warmly when I arrive in Culto’s dining room. The restaurant is quiet, other than the strains of generic chill-out muzak, interrupted periodically by adverts urging an upgrade to Spotify Premium. I’m the only customer — not unusual for any restaurant at 6pm on a Tuesday, but the undercurrent is tense. Staff steal glimpses at me; from the kitchen, I hear a snippet of conversation: “... if you’re going to post stuff on social media …”
Alfio immediately agrees to talk when I ask, and gestures in a gentlemanly fashion for me to sit down at another table together. Of the TikTok, he says sorrowfully, “the best response is nothing.” He understands that mothers can be overprotective, he says. “I respect everybody, I love everybody. For me, nothing happened — just forgive and forget.” The magnanimity is palpable. But what actually happened with the money?
“Do you think I don’t pay?” he asks. “I pay.” It may in part be due to English being a second language, but he also interrupts a lot — it’s hard to get a completely clear answer. He admits he has accidentally underpaid Ruby twice before this. “Mistakes can happen in any company,” he says. He denies ever pocketing tips.
As for Ruby — who he refers to throughout as “the little girl” — he says: “I don’t sack her for this.”
“She tells me, ‘if you don’t pay, I don’t come in.’” Ruby has told me it was her fellow waitress who said she didn’t want to take on more shifts until the discrepancy was addressed. Either way, Alfio says he responded: “If you betray me like that, I don’t need you any more.” Which does sound pretty much like sacking them for this.
Throughout our conversation, Alfio has had the air of a doting parent, wounded by a tearaway child. Until I ask:
“What’s your association with Elvi Drizi?”
Alfio places both hands on the table and stands abruptly, indicating the conversation is over. I stay seated.
He really doesn’t want to talk about Elvi Drizi.
The cult of Culto
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Elvi Drizi, an economics graduate from Tirana, is something of a renaissance man. Long before he had designs on the pizza ovens of Meanwood, he played as a goalkeeper for Albania’s under-21s side. Once he reached West Yorkshire, he joined Robin Hood AFC, eventually making it onto Leeds City’s futsal team — a sort of mini version of football played on a five-a-side basis. You can still view grainy, 12-second clips on a YouTube channel devoted to this era of his life, titled things like “long goal kick from goalkeeper Elvi Drizi.” The path from ex-footballer to restaurateur is a well-trodden one, and by 2016, he had incorporated That’s Amore Leeds Ltd, the company behind the phenomenon that has become Culto.
From the get-go, Culto was greeted rapturously. “The whole thing is as in-your-face authentic as anything you’d get in a proper Italian town,” wrote one critic, who described the joint’s “fanatical” fanbase”. “The best pizza in Leeds by far!!” wrote an early reviewer.
So begins a years-long love affair between locals, the media, and the restaurant. The key was authenticity — working with seasoned Italian chefs who brought recipes and know-how from the motherland. Foodies couldn’t get enough of the pizza bases, with their pillowy, crispy-edged crusts. By 2018, Culto was celebrating being a finalist in a national “Best Pizzeria” championship. When the pandemic hit, they rode the great delivery boom, taking payments through the window glass. (The YEP interviewed then-head chef Nunzio LaRosa a year later, who recalled: “We were very busy during the pandemic. Culto never stops!”) Then Culto expanded its premises with the large, glass-fronted extension. In 2023, it got a nod in an Observer Food Monthly round-up of restaurants naming Meanwood one of the best neighbourhoods to eat out nationwide.
A crowning achievement came the following year, when chefs from the Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani — a sort of pizzaiolo’s guild — welcomed Culto into their ranks, one of only four UK restaurants to receive the honour. The ceremony involved a coronation of sorts using a huge hand-tossed pizza base which was stretched over Elvi’s entire upper body, tearing open to reveal his delighted face.
Adding to the buzz was a sister restaurant in Kirkstall, Poco Sicilian Street Food, plus offshoots including a tiny Poco in the city centre selling snacks sent over from the main restaurant out of a hole-in-the-wall setup. Josh*, then a student who worked at the mini-Poco during holidays between 2023 and 2025, remembers the hour-long queues when it first opened.
The business seemed to be drenched in money. Josh recalls “days where we were bringing in, like, eight, nine grand” — something that left him feeling a touch short changed given his £7.50-an-hour pay. But then, things started changing.
“There were times where they were bringing in shop-bought desserts because they didn't have a pastry chef,” he added. The quality-control situation struck Josh as a real problem due to the intense loyalty Poco had once inspired in its customers — including him. “Basically it all died because the food standard dropped,” he says. By the time he left, takings were more like a few hundred a day, he says. (When reached for comment on this, Elvi did not respond.)
Behind the scenes at Culto, things were changing too. Unbeknownst to Josh — and Leeds at large — both Poco and Culto were in deep financial trouble.
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While Josh was still relishing his new gig, in October 2023, Poco (Leeds) Ltd had already brought in the liquidators. An official bankruptcy document showed that as of October 2023 the company’s creditors were likely to lose around £205,000. The largest single loser was HMRC, at £87,000. At this time, the business had two co-directors: Elvi, marked as the business’ “person of significant control,” and Jennifer Finch, who I have not been able to reach for comment.
Given Josh’s report of thousands in takings per day at the city centre site alone, this was strange. And the last set of accounts that Poco (Leeds) Ltd filed had looked healthy: the company was making profits, had capital and reserves of £99,000, and had doubled its workforce from seven to fourteen.
It took a while, and a lot of digging, for Poco (Leeds) Ltd’s liquidators to uncover the big factor in the company’s demise. In October 2024, a year after being appointed, they reported that Poco’s directors owed the company about £61,000; in other words, Drizi and Finch had taken that amount out of the company before calling in the liquidators.
A year later, in November 2025, this number had risen. The liquidators now calculated that Poco’s directors had taken not £61,000, but £190,000 out of the company. They had also loaned another £47,000 of Poco’s cash to other companies that they controlled. In all, then, Poco’s two directors had removed nearly a quarter of a million pounds of cash before they put the company into liquidation. Creditors, including HMRC, then lost £205,000. When reached for comment, Elvi didn’t explain how this had happened.
But publicly, Poco carried on. Elvi had quietly formed a new company, Sicilian Street Food Ltd, which would now trade as Poco. This company, registered in June 2023 in advance of the original Poco’s liquidation in October, bought up Poco’s remaining assets (most likely, kitchen equipment) at a cost of £10,000, before assigning itself as the trading vehicle for Poco-at-large.
Two months later, Elvi resigned as a director of Sicilian Street Food Ltd and sold his shares to someone called Enrico Vanasco. A year and a half later, this new company was also liquidated, itself owing £140,000, including £84,000 in tax. (I’ve been unable to reach Vanasco for comment.)
Poco’s main Kirkstall branch shut in December last year, and the original Poco company was finally officially wound up just a few days ago. In their report, the liquidators said they had made “numerous” attempts to contact the directors, but a “lack of cooperation” meant that no repayment terms were agreed. “A formal demand for repayment of the above amount went unanswered,” they wrote.
“Those sites closed and are now run by businesses unconnected to me,” Elvi said, when originally approached for comment. At time of publication, he had not responded to a later request for comment on the more detailed history outlined above.
“It has become apparent that the directors may have left the country”
That’s Poco. But Culto was in a similar position.
In April 2023 — not long after The Observer had name-checked Culto as part of the great revival of British foodie neighbourhoods — Elvi called in the liquidators. (Once again, Elvi and Finch were directors.) An official filing showed Culto’s creditors stood to lose around £218,000, including £111,000 owed in tax. When asked about this, Elvi told me that the liquidation happened “on professional advice after the business could not recover from the impact during and after the pandemic.” (In fact, Culto’s March 2021 accounts had shown it making a profit and increasing its workforce.)
Asked about this period, Elvi told me that “the site continued trading under staff management while matters around the lease were being resolved,” and said he’d come back to me on the details, which he has not done at time of publication. But the Companies House paper trail helps clarify the picture.
Culto continued trading with roughly the same gambit as Elvi used with Poco: Incorporate a new company (called “Britalian” this time), use this to buy up Culto’s assets for a song (this time paying £17,000), and then announce that the new company will trade as Culto. That all happened just before That’s Amore — Culto’s original company — went into liquidation. By October 2024, Britalian was controlled by the same Enrico Vanasco who had previously replaced Drizi at Poco. Six months later, Britalian too went into liquidation owing £101,000 in tax.
Asked about the Britalian asset purchase last week, Elvi said: “I’ll confirm the current position on those assets directly rather than give you an incomplete answer now.” He hasn't done so.
The liquidators tasked with cleaning up after That’s Amore say that they’d spotted possibilities of recovering some money from the directors, but once again were stonewalled by them. The directors “have not been forthcoming in responding to our enquiries, and it has become apparent that they may have left the country,” the liquidators wrote. As a result, “[financial] claims have been identified against the directors”.
When asked why he had been so hard to reach over Culto’s liquidation, Elvi said that he responded to the “best of my ability,” though didn’t elaborate when pressed on the matter. He didn’t respond to a later query about why he was unresponsive to Poco’s liquidators, either.
Pursuing such claims is expensive, though. The liquidators tried to find someone who would take it on in return for some of the recoveries, but were unsuccessful. Ultimately and “reluctantly,” they concluded that they had to abandon these claims against Drizi and Finch, because there was no money to pursue them with.
Wanting to talk to Elvi in person, I go knocking at some of the addresses detailed on Companies House, getting blank stares from most occupants. I’m left with one last address on my list, 4a Stainburn Drive — a modest flat above a row of local shops.
“Wish me luck,” I message my colleague Brad.
“If there's no answer, bounce a football on the floor and see whether he instinctively runs outside and picks it up,” Brad responds, helpfully. “Goalkeeping never leaves you.”
There’s no answer at 4a. But as I stuff a note through the letterbox, I spy a stack of unopened letters addressed to Elvi. In the hall window, two large yellow signs warn that CCTV monitoring is in progress. Next door, in “Bargain Booze Plus,” a slightly giggly assistant says that Elvi moved away two or three months ago. The main reason he stood out, she said, was his fancy cars — a Land Rover, she claims, and a Maybach.
But I finally do reach Elvi, in digital form at least, who, it turns out is quite responsive on LinkedIn. Here, I put to him my questions about the liquidation of Culto, and the money left unpaid. Far from running away from liquidators, Elvi says, he’s mostly lived abroad since 2018 “for family reasons unconnected to this.”
He says he communicated with the liquidators to the best of his ability. But when I follow up to ask what had held him back from helping them out, he doesn’t respond. He intends to “raise the outstanding position” with the liquidators on his next UK visit, he says, but doesn’t elaborate what that means or whether it involves paying back some of the owed tax.
But one other question hovers in the background. Does Elvi, in fact, still have a hand in running Culto?
The company now running it, registered as NN JJ, is in the name of Alfio, the chef who had underpaid Ruby. But there’s a lot of overlap between the two men. Aside from cheffing for Elvi throughout the Poco heyday, they each have had businesses registered at the same building, two doors down from Culto. (“That doesn’t make his business mine,” notes Elvi, adding: “This address was used in the past by myself as I leased the property which was given back to the landlords upon the lease expiration.”) Yet some people also have the lingering impression that Elvi is still attached to it.
Ruby tells me about the first time Elvi came through, during one of her very first shifts, late last year. A manager asked her to spruce the place up because “Elvi was coming in tonight,” she says. “And I was like, ‘oh, who’s Elvi?’ Because I’ve not met him yet. And she says: ‘oh, he’s the big boss.’”
When I press her on this, she’s very clear: During the time she worked at Culto, Elvi visited about three times — most recently around June — each time behaving much more like a proprietor than a guest. He would enter via the back door, she said, would poke around in cupboards and behind the till, and would have animated arguments with Alfio.
The idea that Elvi is still the “big boss” lives on elsewhere: when I ask in the fish and chip shop next door whether a man called Elvi Drizi runs any businesses around here, the owner Waad — who claims to be Elvi’s friend — nods over at Culto.
“The guy is from fish and chips,” says Alfio, dismissively, when I ask him. “He don’t know our business.”
Both Alfio and Elvi are very clear that there is no formal connection between Elvi on the one hand, and Culto or NN JJ Ltd on the other. “I hold no ownership, directorship or management role in the business now trading as Culto,” Elvi tells me. “Alfio Trovato holds a full commercial lease on the premises and is, to my knowledge, solely responsible for how it’s run.”
I’ve also seen Ruby’s contract and payslips, which clearly come from Alfio’s business NN JJ: no overlap there. In any case, Elvi has other projects: Today, he’s working on staff rota and wage bill calculating software (something that might come in handy at Culto). Another short-lived project attached to him, Fonda1211, suggests he dabbled in interior design, but is being wrapped up on Companies House.
Whatever the case, it now looks like a day will come when neither Elvi nor Alfio are attached to this pizza-making Mecca of Meanwood: Culto is up for sale. Brokers Ernest Wilson say you can acquire this “high-performing business” for £265,000.
I ask Alfio why he’s selling up. It turns out that pizza was never his forte. “To be honest, my passion is different,” says Alfio. “It’s more, you know, with cakes, sweets, ice cream.” He’s tired, and feels ground down by the online furore — even as he continues to refuse to elaborate why he doesn’t have a formal record of giving out tips, as he’s legally required to do.
I find myself thinking that maybe the sale is a good thing. Culto’s next owner should really be someone who won’t drain a business and disappear; or who isn’t secretly yearning to turn out cannoli instead of pizza. Recent online reviews suggest customers think the place has lost its shine of late. Perhaps Culto’s best chance of restoring its old glory is to break with its past.
*Name has been changed to protect his identity. The Exchange has seen documentation confirming his employment at Poco.
Things to do:
🌳Improve your photography and get a nature walk in in one fell swoop this Sunday with a Phone Photography walk in the gorgeous Shipley Glen. This free “photo ramble” will be led by Louise from Yorkshire Phone Photography and will offer tips and tricks to getting better snaps on a family friendly group walk. The group will meet at the spectacular wooded ravine at 10am. (And if you catch something particularly special, hit Mia up to be considered for our Monday photography showcase, The Big Picture)
🌈A charity kids’ colour run should help your littluns let off some steam this Sunday, 12-3pm, at Carr Manor Fields in Meanwood. “Kids can dash, play, and get splashed with vibrant colours” at the event, the organisers say. Tickets are £16.96, with all proceeds going to the Syed & Eliza Health Foundation, which offers health services in Cambodia.
💡Ever wanted to power your home with your EV battery? The Open Source Hardware Camp returns to Hebden Bridge this weekend, with talks and workshops about people attempting everything from home-made computer chips to an LCD screen made from algae. It all sounds massively above our pay grade, but if you’ve got any taste for tinkering/engineering/open-sourcing your tech, this looks like the place to be. Tickets start at £13.42 and you need to register to attend. The full programme is here.
