You Oltra try it: Correct weight for station pizza joint

At the ‘charming bit’ out the front of Central Station, The Mouth found the perfect place to bust his diet. New York style. By the slice.

Oltra is a semipermanent pizza shop and bar at Central Station in Sydney. Picture: Instagram

A number of months ago, a very fancy digital scale appeared in the amenities wing of the master suite at Mouth House.

Curious by nature, we stepped on it to see how it worked, only to have it flash up a number that was later described as “not ideal.”

Long story short, we decided to do something about this, and quick smart.

A salad a week, fewer martinis, more wine, and the occasional avocado (sorry, renters) put us on the glide slope to a healthy waistline.

So after two gruelling months of this regime, leading to precisely two fewer kilograms around the gut, we decided it was time for a celebration.

The entrance to Oltra pizza shop and bar at Central Station in Sydney. Picture: Instagram

Just as American corporations chuck on a pizza party for their staff to boost morale, we decided it was time for a slice.

But not just any slice: We popped into Pizza Oltra in, of all places, Eddy Avenue.

One of the tasty offerings at Oltra.

Which, if you’re not familiar with it, is the charming bit out the front of Central Station, where a vibrant (if freelance) footpath drinking culture has flourished for years, long before anyone in charge decided we needed to be “more European”.

Oltra is a funny little spot of the sort that Sydney needs more of.

It’s a little bit Melbourne, but not in the ruined CBD and public debt sort of way.

The deal is that they do pizza, by the pie or (take note everyone else) by the slice.

There’s a bar with lots of bottles of things like Cynar where we fetched up, plus sort of moody industrial seating.

And the pizza? Well, pretty good.

The “round” slices have a nice, almost New York-y snap, though not a proper New York slice. We devoured a couple of slices of pepperoni (the meat small and spicy, not the big discs you’re used too) dressed with ranch dressing (well, if you insist) before moving on to their “deep dish” potato pizza.

Not quite a Detroit or a Sicilian, it’s a thing unto itself, much fluffier than we expected but we could have used more Italian sausage.

Our only regret is that we couldn’t properly park ourselves at the bar all afternoon ordering slices and calling for cocktails (can you make a Paper Plane? How about a Vieux-Carre?) but we only had two kilos we needed to put back on to return to fighting form.