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Tonight was the first night of the Great Australian Pizza Hunt. The goal of this mission is to find the best New York Style Pizza in Australia. Searching on google only returns a now defunct fresh pizza importer (don’t ask how they manage to get a pizza across the Pacific and still call it fresh, but maybe that’s why their site is no longer operational). Thus, although New York Style pizza is the ultimate goal, just finding a few good pizza places would be a reasonable 2nd place.

And so Lisa, Christina, Cindy and I went to Cristo’s Pizzera, a lovely little jam packed restaurant on Glenmore Rd. at Five Ways, Paddington (Called Five Ways because it is on a roundabout with five exits). We knew we were in for a treat when we got there and the host told us that they were full and couldn’t accommodate us for half an hour. We were fine with this, but he was overly apologetic about the fact that a number of reservations were made for just that time and went out of his way to tell us just how sorry he was that he couldn’t seat us right away. We left our phone number, and he told us he would call when the table was ready. Since the pizza place was right near Christina’s apartment, she knew what was around and directed us to a little place called “and the dish ran away with the spoon” where the four of us proceeded to devour a large chips with sweet chili sauce (no sour cream though). Just as we finished up the phone rang and we headed on the long journey back to the pizza place (next door). As we walked in a bottle of wine was ripped from our grasp by an over eager waitress, and we sat down at a table with two equal sized benches (shunning the uneven ones next to it). After some discussion 2 pizzas were decided on: Artichoke with eggplant and vegetarian. Although it took some time before the waitress came back to take our order (and even longer for them to bring water glasses), when the 2 large pies came out it was worth the wait. Piled high with toppings, and sporting a crispy crust, the slices were even big enough to fold slightly- not anywhere close to a real New York slice, but still a respectable size. After the wonderful pizzas, we just sat around and talked for a while, as the bill took its time in getting to our table (even when we eventually asked for it).

After that we headed out in search of ice cream, but our long wander only took us past rows of closed art galleries and auction houses along with pricey cafes, although the girls got a kick out of the wine bottle I had stuck in my back pocket. Eventually we decided we could continue in that direction no longer and headed back towards Christina’s place. When we got there a quick conference indicated ice cream was still in the cards, and we headed over to the Mobil station convenience store for some Frozen Magnums (an Australian ice cream bar). My caramel and vanilla ice cream one was delicious and we just sat on a concrete slab and talked about things we wanted to do in Sydney and had, as Cindy put it, ‘one of those nights that you will remember forever.’ It wasn’t due to anything in particular, but it just felt like one of those serene nights where the girls in the 80’s clothing passed by at an unbelievable frequency and we just got to sit back and watch everything. Eventually we went back to Christina’s again and started watching a TV show, ‘The Fist’ which was so bad that we had to turn it off after a little while. At that point we decided we should make our way home, and walked over to Taylor Square to catch the bus back here.

It was a wonderfully fun night, and definitely a good place to head to for pizza. The 2nd chapter in the story should be forthcoming in the next few weeks. I’m not sure how often we will do them, but by the end of the year we should have tried a fair number of pizza places in our quest for the best!
5:08 PM