TasWeekend: A slice of the action

THE menu at Local Pizza is not quite what you expect at a suburban pizzeria.

TASWEEKEND FOOD PIX to illustrate Graeme Phillip's restaurant review at Local Pizza in Berriedale

NOW for something completely different – a menu reading Marg, Big Bill, BBQ Bird, Porkipine, Americano, Bonza, Sting, Finer Things, Adonis, Greeno, Wild Thing and White Guy. Not quite what you expect at a suburban pizzeria.

Local Pizza’s “Finer Things” option with mushrooms, red onion, capers, olives, capsicum and mozzarella.

And it’s not what the northern locals expected either when Isabella Lubiana opened Local Pizza last March.

“For the first few months, people didn’t know what to make of us and the only pizza they seemed to order was the “Porkipine” with ham and pineapple topping,” she says.

“Now they’re much more adventurous and we probably only sell one or two Porkipines in every 50 or 100 orders.”

And it pays to be adventurous for, while the names might be quirky, the ingredients, topping combinations and the crisp, thin, hand-stretched bases themselves are first-class. And, with the regular after-work MONA crew and diners from Hobart and farther south filling the place on the very busy takeaway night of our dinner, it’s clear the word on Local Pizza has spread.

It’s a fun and relaxed, no-frills sort of operation with the minimal decor and high ceilings of an ex-butcher shop seating about 40 at shared benches and tables made of recycled timber.

Now, with summer in full swing, the outside tables are proving popular as well as offering a welcome respite to walkers and cyclists from the bike track next door.

The ex-butcher shop seats about 40 at shared benches. Pictures: KIM EISZELE

Inside or outside, you place your order and pay at the counter, collect your own water and cutlery, take a seat at the communal benches or at a couple of small tables and be entertained by, on our visit, Lubiana herself wielding the pizza paddle and feeding the flames in the huge wood-fired oven. Imported from Italy, the oven’s internal base rotates in an oven temperature of about 450C crisping the dough and cooking the pizza in about two-and-a-half minutes.

I ordered my benchmark tomato, basil and mozzarella “Marg”, or margarita, pizza, “pimped”, as the menu expresses it, with anchovies.

Local Pizza 52 Maroni Rd, Berriedale; licensed; Wednesday to Friday, 5pm to 9.30pm, weekends, noon to 9.30pm; 6249 3573

My wife’s “Finer Things” pizza with marinated mushrooms, red onion, capers, Kalamata olives, oregano, roasted capsicum and mozzarella was, she said, “scrumptious”.

Just as scrumptious sounding were such toppings as free-range pork and fennel sausage, gorgonzola, red onion, capers and jalapenos on the “Wild Thing” pizza; the unusual cream base, zucchini, gorgonzola, garlic and parsley of the “White Guy” or the “BBQ Bird’s” smoked chicken, onion, jalapenos, homemade barbecue sauce, mozzarella, sour cream and coriander.

There are 12 different pizza options, some available gluten-free, plus a classic garlic pizza, a daily pizza special and a dessert pizza consisting of a hot pizza pocket with vanilla ice cream and Nutella. To finish, there is also an excellent tiramisu, as well as glazed doughnuts and a selections of gelati.

Plus, there’s a wide selection of beers, ciders and Tasmanian wines including, of course, the impressive Lubiana family wines from up the road at Granton.

Garlic pizza $5; Pizzas $20; extras $2/$3/$5; ice cream pizza $8; tiramisu $6/$12

Our reviewer arrives unannounced and pays his own way.