RossoPomodoro

By Matthew Evans

The best pizza has a thin, crisp crust, right?

Wrong. The best Neapolitan style pizza - the original round pizza - is thin, but has a soggy middle, a scorched bum and perfect, full flavoured, minimal toppings. The best pizza in Sydney is at RossoPomodoro.

Tucked under a block of flats at the arse end of Balmain, the White Bay part, with nothing outside to recommend it, you could easily miss the joint. But step over the threshold from the mediocrity of staid, faux Tuscan-rendered new Balmain and you’ll enter mini Italia.

What a change a metre makes. Inside it’s heroically loud; voices – many of them Italian – ricocheting off the polished concrete floor, chairs scraping, laughter tinkling, orders being yelled, specials described in accents as thick and rich as affogato.

The floor is dotted with murals of ripe San Marzano-red tomatoes. Spindly legged, blonde-backed chairs cluster around too-small tables and there are a few slightly lewd pictures on the walls. There’s a blackboard with the list of rules: No half and half. No ham and pineapple. Only Italian mozzarella. Only Italian toppings. No corkage. Italian certified pizza maker. Pizza cooked straight on the stone.

While it may sound a bit like Mussolini sets the rules, there’s a reason for keeping things pure. You’ll find out why when you taste the results. I’ve a certain reluctant admiration for places that don’t try to please everybody. Polarising the punters is just fine when restaurants know their stuff. If this place has lost any friends, you wouldn’t know it – every time I come it’s packed.

From the ebullient service of Davide Colavecchio, delivered with a cheeky glint from underneath his lusciously long, dark lashes, to the fact they slow rise the dough for 72 hours to cut down on the yeast needed and give the dough a better flavour and texture, what’s not to love? Pizzaiolo and part owner Giancarlo Bazzocchi may not be from Napoli (he’s from Bologna), but his wonderful disks of pleasure almost could be.

RossoPomodoro’s pizze arrive blistered, the bottom scorched and yet so soft that you can, as the Neapolitans do, make a portafoglio, a “wallet” by folding it in four for eating on the run (but don’t, because these ones have been cut). It’s this miracle, the seeming incongruous nature of a soft middle and the chariness underneath, that makes it authentic. The flavours are sometimes bold, sometimes fleeting, but always true.

Our margherita, the classic tomato, mozzarella and basil version has all those gutsy, lusty flavours vaguely reminiscent of Da Michele in Naples. RossoPomodro offers a “Bianche” list, the white-based pizza where no tomato is used, such as porcini with prosciutto. Specials may include the incredible treviso radicchio, gorgonzola and Italian sausage version, an unlikely but stunning combination of bitter leaves, acidic cheese and sweet pork meat. Burst cherry tomatoes freckle the house pizza, crouching amidst splodges of innocent white ricotta under a forest of uncooked, long stemmed wild rocket.

They do offer a few other things besides pizza, such as pasta, antipasto, bruschetta and salad. But roasted rounds of dough are where it’s at, Colavecchio telling us “that’z ourr specialtee,” in that gorgeous Pugliese accent of his and dismissing anything else with a wave of his hand.

Dessert, it must be said, lets the side down a little, just as it does in most Italian pizzerie. A ricotta and candied fruit tart is brought in from the old country, and it’s pretty good, but not great, the accompanying gelato a bit lacklustre. Shame, as gelato from nearby Gelateria 2000 in Darling Street is one of Sydney’s finest.

Of course, this is an authentic version of pizza, and not one for lovers of fast food chains or the thick, doughy style perfected in the US. Yes, it is a bit loud, and okay, they’re not licensed (‘though there is a bottle-o a few doors up). But if you want the finest pizza around, one that would look good in an Italian town, then RossoPomodoro is the place to eat it. Either that or get RossoPomodoro as takeaway and eat it somewhere else.

Pizza score 8/10

Tues-Sun from 6pm-late

Prices start from about $16 for a pizza that feeds one hungry person, or two as a light meal.

RossoPomodoro

Shop 90-91

24 Buchanan Street

Balmain

Tel.: 02 9555 5924