Aces Pizza – a celebration of family and a time when eating out was less complicated
Red sauce and a stack of garlic rule at a heart-felt tribute to old-fashioned Italian dining, writes Simon Wilkinson.
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Baking bread… freshly mown grass… rose oil… a sea breeze. These are some of the smells that people find most attractive, researchers have found. But if they’d asked for my vote, I’d have found a waft of garlic sizzling in butter or a glug of olive oil hard to go past. So, naturally I took an instant liking to Aces Pizza & Liquor, the lovingly revamped diner and bottle shop alongside the Central Market that is like a speakeasy for garlic freaks.
On a Saturday night, the only way in is off Gouger St, where a gent waits to usher customers into a darkened arcade and through an anonymous back door. One deep breath and we know it’s the right place.
Owner Andrew Fantasia has taken over his father Enzo’s defiantly daggy sports bar-cum-pizza parlour, kept the best part of its character intact and created a nostalgic tribute to his dad and the kind of Italian dining that seems an endangered species. There is no wood oven, no artisan this and that, and no haughty attitude.
Having snuck in a few times for a lunchtime pizza and pint at the old Aces, it’s comforting to see the original structure has been adapted rather than destroyed. The long bar and parquetry floors still look the part alongside new wood panelling, upholstered booths and black-and-white family photos, the whole a nod to 1950s New York bistro or perhaps a flash Italian social club.
Andrew has roped in a few big talents to help with the transition. James Hillier, who started in a fruit and veg stall at the market and now co-owns Golden Boy, worked on the design. His co-conspirator next door at Africola, Duncan Welgemoed, helped Andrew and chef Josh Lansley pull the menu into shape.
This kitchen is fuelled by what they have dubbed “Sunday sauce”, the kind of garlic-heavy tomato concoction that bubbles away on the family stove in (southern) Italy whenever there is a crowd to feed. Here it is slathered on pizzas, dolloped on pasta and meatballs, even used as the dipping sauce for sticks of crumbed mozzarella.
All bar one of the mains costs an even $20 (the steak is $22) and I suspect that will be the extent of many other orders. But what would we talk about then?
Piano Piano, on the other hand, is a four-course greatest hits collection at $50 a pop. You won’t go home hungry.
It starts with salumi at its simplest, a plate piled with folds of mortadella and prosciutto, a blob of caramelised onion, segments of pickled onion and a side-serve of grilled bread.
Those mozzarella sticks look like crumbed sausages but contain a soft, rather than melted and oozy, baton of cheese. More of the dipping sauce would be nice.
For mine, the pastas are Aces’ strong suit, for which local company Pasta Fresca, which makes the noodles each morning, must take some of the credit.
Much of the early hype has been around the Capellini Golden Century and its garlic butter sauce that is said to be based on a closely guarded recipe from the legendary Sydney Chinese restaurant. While I have never eaten the original, in which it is served with snow crab, this version certainly contains something beyond butter and garlic that makes the frontal cortex crave more even as the heart valves scream for mercy. Chunks of decent quality prawn meat make a fair substitute for the crab.
Mario Carbone’s Spicy Rigatoni is another homage, this time to a salmon-coloured sauce made famous by one of the kingpins of dining in NYC. The home-spun charms of ragu Bolognese is more my style, the minced pork and veal having sputtered away for hours until the milk it is cooked in has reduced to a rich, creamy residue.
Pizzas rewind to the years when they were a simple, guilty thrill of copious toppings on a fairly anonymous base. The choices are split into Old School and New School, with plenty of puns to go around. Napoli Dynamite uses the stuffed cherry peppers found in deli selections, splattered over the top as if fired from a cannon, the cheese filling spread thick right out to the biscuity crust.
Guess what comes next? Yep, tiramisu, and it’s a good-un, not too sweet, just enough booze.
All this is delivered by a young waiter of boundless confidence and energy. If he occasionally verges on being a little too eager to please, it’s better than the alternative.
Aces is a celebration of family and a time when eating out was less complicated, more caring. Who could argue with that?
ACES PIZZA & LIQUOR
62 Gouger St, city
8231 6797, acespizzaliquor.com
OWNER Fantasia family
CHEFS Josh Lansley, Duncan Welgemoed
FOOD Old school Italian
SMALL $8-$16 MAIN $20-$22
DESSERT $12
DRINKS Short wine list or choose from a larger selection in the bottle shop.
OPEN BREAKFAST Fri-Sat LUNCH Mon-Sat DINNER Thu-Sat
SCORE: 14/20
