Cheezy Pizza, 75 Gamon Street, Yarraville. Phone: 9078 9392
Consider The Sauce likes pizza.
But not that much, other eating-out options in the wonderful west usually pushing our buttons much more often.
And when we do opt for pizza, there’s two kind that take our fancy.
One of them being Lebanese pies – they’re cheap and wonderful, though in Australia they’re not what readily springs to mind when the word “pizza” is bandied about.
Our other pizza affection is the real-deal Italian style now able to be found freely.
In our experience, they’re pricier, but are worth because of the care put into them, with an accent on high-quality ingredients – but not too many of them.
Your Aussie pizzas?
Not so much.
Sure, they have their place – and we’ve eaten plenty.
But we just don’t reverberate with joy at the thought of messy, greasy piles of poor-quality makings.
Processed ham especially rankles.
But one thing we do love is absolutely love is reader feedback, suggestions and tips.
One such tip leads us to try Cheezy Pizza on Gamon Street in Yarraville.
Here Steve Evagora and his partner have set up shop in what has been a pizza joint like forever.
It’s a bare bones pizza place, though quite comfortable.
And it is ALL about pizza.
Aside from garlic bread, two dessert pies and choc mousse, it’s all pizza, pizza, pizza (see menu below).
No sign at of salads, pasta, steaks or schnitzels.
We like that.
And we like Steve’s gameplan.
“When we were setting this place up, we decided we want to take Aussie pizzas – and make them better,” he says. “There’s no processed ham here.”
This strikes us a wonderfully laudable aim.
And, after sampling the Cheezy Pizza wares on two dinner-time occasions, we reckon they’re nailing it good.
Of the four Cheezy Pizza pies we try, the champion is our large American ($15.90).
It’s a simple affair – mozzarella, tomato and salami.
But it’s the tomato sauce that is the winning key – this is plentiful and has depth of flavour and texture foreign to most Aussie pizza places.
“I’m in awe of how good this is,” Bennie enthusiastically opines.
He’s not kidding.
On the same visit, we also try a small capriciossa ($9.90).
Sporting tomato sauce, mozzarella, leg ham, mushrooms and olives, this is good – though doesn’t have quite the same tasty flavour hit as our American pie.
The following week, we phone in an order and pick it up ourselves.
The eternal popularity of home delivery for pizzas puzzles us, as they seem to suffer in the process just as much as hamburgers.
Our large New Yorker (tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, cherry tomatoes, feta and rocket, $19.90) is excellent.
With it we get a small pesto chicken (pesto, mozzarella, chicken breast, pine nuts, olive oil, fresh basil, $12.90).
This lies outside our usual purist pizza inclinations.
But it’s also a winner – and we love that the pine nuts are generously festooned across our pizza.
Little things like that make a big difference.
Well there you go.
Looks like we’ve found an Aussie-style pizza place that will become a regular haunt for us.