Previous SlideNext Slide

Pizza is surely Italy’s most successful export, apart from, maybe, Francesco Totti. You will find it in almost every corner of the world, but especially in Manly. When the locals aren’t nibbling edamame or poke bowls, they’re eating pizza. So why would Federico Zanellato and the team from of LuMi and Lode Pies open a pizzeria in pizza central?

I counted four different pizza joints on the stroll from Manly Pier to Avoja (which is Roman slang for “hell, yeah”). One does tandoori chicken pizza, another shawarma. There are Amazon Rainforest pizzas, and dessert pizzas featuring M&Ms.

But at Avoja, there’s a TV on the wall instead of a huge board with the usual 40 variations on a theme. The menu lists margherita (the queen of pizzas), then runs through marinara, capricciosa, four cheeses, and a few more contemporary ideas such as broccoli puree with anchovies and burrata; and Emilio’s Butcher sausage with potato, smoked provolone and roasted onion.

The place is a charmer, half sports bar and half leafy backyard, with its metal tables and chairs, checked tablecloths and a gallery wall of Italian celebrities (Sophia Loren, Valentino, Pavarotti etc).

The pizze are almost cartoonish, with exaggerated shapes and colours. The crust is bigger and puffier than most, the tomato redder, the basil greener.

Head chef and pizzaiolo Matteo Ernandes is more than a little fanatical about making his dough as hydrated as possible, using stone-ground flour and a 24-hour pre-ferment to push the moisture content as far as he can (80 per cent). He brings pizza pedigree from his time at Da Orazio in Bondi and Matteo in Double Bay, and treats Avoja like his own private pizza lab.

The rest of the menu is short and sweet, from a few mixed olives to a good fritto misto of seafood. Pair a pizza with a vibrant heirloom tomato salad ($9), juicy with red onion, basil and a clever crush of more tomatoes on top, or a crystal-clear ruby-red tuna crudo with nectarine and gnarly fried capers ($24) in a pool of dressing.

It all feels like clever, simple, casalinga cooking, energised by brisk service and good wine knowledge from LuMi alumni Michela Boncagni, Angelo Cristella and Piero Fonseca.

And the pizze? They’re almost cartoonish, with exaggerated shapes and colours. The crust is bigger and puffier than most, the tomato redder, the basil greener. When I tear apart the charred crust, pock-marked with bubbles of black, there’s an airy hole the size of a golf ball.

There’s an elasticity and resilience to the dough and the base doesn’t turn slippery-soft in the middle when you eat it in the hand, folded over “a libretto”, like a book. It augurs well for the wood-fired pizzeria the team plans to open on the Surry Hills Village site mid-year.

The margherita of tomatoes, basil and mozza ($22) spends 90 seconds in the wood-fired oven and arrives puffy, airy and crisp. The sausage and potato pizza ($29) screams comfort food but lacks the punch and cut-through of a tomato base.

There is also garlic pizza breads, pizza fritta, and a revelatory twice-cooked (doppio-cottura) pizza ($18) that gets pressed on a hot griddle to sear the base before going into the oven, simply topped with tomato, oregano and parmigiano.

It’s dramatically crisp without actually tasting fried, which is quite an achievement, and bloody delicious with a glass of Il Vispo 2021 Sangiovese ($18/$73), a punky, floral Tuscan red.

The cannoli ($12 for 2) are the stuff of dreams; the pastry sugar-dusted and almost indestructibly crunchy, the ricotta filling studded with diced cedro (candied citron).

Aha! This is when I realise that those celebrities on the wall are the clue to everything. They are not only proudly Italian, they are really, really good at what they do (otherwise, they wouldn’t be celebrities).

So, is that what Avoja is doing too – just getting really, really good at what it does, which is the art and craft of Italian pizza? Hell yeah.