Dimitri's Pizza, Darlinghurst

So you like your pizzas puffy and blistered with a caramelised char? Me too. At Dimitri's Pizza in Darlinghurst, they churn out brilliantly floppy pizzas made with sourdough bases, finished in an Italian-made woodfired oven.



The best table is by the kitchen, offering a front row view of all the pizza making action. There's something almost sensual about watching a pizzaiolo gently coax the dough into shape, then strew it with toppings before plunging it into the fiery cavern of the woodfired oven (I told you it was sensual).


Marinara pizza $18 with stracciatella +$10
tomato, confit garlic and oregano

The classic marinara is simplicity at its best: a humble tomato sauce with confit garlic and oregano. We upgrade ours with stracciatella, made from torn mozzarella soaked in cream. It adds a milky decadence to this tomato pizza, interspersed with alternating hits of jammy garlic cloves and fresh basil leaves.

The pizza edges are the best bit, brilliantly bubbled around the edges with all the right shades of char. The base is soft and floppy because of its thinness, perfect for folding over while you try and eat this demurely with your fingers (who am I kidding? Just get right in there).


Funguy pizza $23
Mushroom, mozzarella, truffle oil, chilli and basil

The pizza menu is reassuringly short - just eight options to choose from - but owners Ken Williams and Drew Huston aren't tied to the usual toppings. They're not afraid of a few puns either, like the funguy pizza with mushrooms and truffle oil (boom tish).


Cream of korn pizza $23
Wood oven smoked and creamed corn, mozzarella and pickled jalapenos

The cream of korn pizza wins over my tastebuds tonight though, because, CORN. It's a party of juicy sweet corn kernels sliced straight off the cob, made even tastier with stretchy molten mozzarella cheese and the gentle heat of pickled jalapenos.


Bee sting pizza $23
Tomato, sopressa, mozzarella and hot honey

Things get even wilder with the bee sting pizza. That's slices of sopressa - an aged salami - drizzled over with warm honey.


Sopressa salami pizza with mozarella and hot honey

It's not as strange as you think. Pork goes brilliantly with sugar - think roast pork with apple sauce or Chinese char siu barbecue pork. Here it adds a mellow richness to the cured pork.


Smoked eggplant $16
with charred cherry tomatoes, olives and parmigiano 

It's not all pizza either.

The smoked eggplant is terrific, its buttery soft flesh permeated with smoky undertones, sauced up with blistered cherry tomatoes and a cloud of parmigiano cheese.


Cheese and tomato $16
housemade stracciatella and mixed heirloom tomatoes 

We get in on more housemade stacciatella action too, dolloped generously over a medley of mixed heirloom tomatoes. Tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and extra virgin olive oil. Is there a more iconic taste of Italy?

Drinks? There's definitely a focus on boutique beer breweries, including half a dozen beers by Marrickville brewery The Grifter. Happy hour used to run 5pm-7pm but looks to have been shortened to 6pm now. There's a pretty decent selection of wines too, includes orange/skin wines and nine wines available by the glass.





Dimitri's Pizzeria
215 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 8068 4247

Opening hours
Wednesday to Saturday 5pm til late


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Noi, Petersham

Take one LuMi co-owner, Anastasia Drakopolous, add Veneto-bred chef Alessandro Intini (ex-Aqua Dining) and you have Noi Restaurant plonked in the middle of Little Portugal, Petersham. It's the kind of fancy restaurant you wouldn't expect in Petersham, but one that's likely to accommodate the changing demographic in the inner west: one that likes good food with parking and isn't too far from home.

The seven-course tasting menu is priced at a very reasonable $72 or choose your own adventure with a la carte - entrees range between $18-$21; mains are $26-$31.

It's a reasonable proposition once you factor in the complimentary items. We're immediately presented with amuse bouche of lemon thyme pastry puffs with mayonnaise and mini tacos with salmon and wine jelly. They're incongruously served in a Chinese steamer basket, but functional and cultural inexplicabilites aside, it makes for a welcome and appetite-inducing introduction.


Milk bun, focaccia and bread sticks with extra virgin olive oil and smoked paprika butter

There's a sense of LuMi hospitality too in the presentation of the complimentary bread offering, a trio of options served in an elegant timber box. Quell any hunger pangs with the mini milk bun, a square of crusty focaccia and elongated bread sticks. Smoked paprika butter is dolloped into a wooden pinch pot; extra virgin olive oil is dispensed using a (plastic) pipette. While the novelty value of the pipette is high, my only quibble would be it wasn't quite enough for three people.

Maybe I'm looking for the similarities, but the decor has LuMi vibes too, a sense of understated luxury with its cool tones of dark timber, brass and midnight blue. The napkins are heavy, water is poured into beautiful ceramic cups and industrial lights illuminate exposed brick walls and stripped back floorboards.


Kingfish, young fennel and wild rice $20

The menu reads more like a list of ingredients. You can always ask waitstaff for more details - or look on Instagram (you bet we did). It leads us to lock in the kingfish with young fennel and wild rice. The entree is light and refreshing, delicate slices of firm kingfish contrasted with the acidity of pickled fennel and the nutty crunch of wild rice puffs.


Pig's head terrine with coconut, turmeric and sherry vinegar $18

Pig's head terrine is steadily becoming one of Noi's signature dishes, raved on about across Instagram. The picked morsels of pork are compressed into a neat little log, crowned with a dollop of whipped coconut cream and scattered with toasted coconut flakes. The coconut adds a tropical decadence although it does feel a touch overwhelming - perhaps even dessert-like - against the soft and tender fattiness of the pork.


Risotto, Cloudy Bay clams, asparagus and sour cream $21

We skip the housemade pasta options in favour of risotto. The rice is cooked to a toothsome chewiness, strewn with petite nuggets of de-shelled Cloudy Bay clams and crisp spears of asparagus. It eats better than it looks, fortified with pinstripes of asparagus emulsion and sour cream.


Lamb, hazelnut, kipfler potatoes and buerre noisette $29

Lamb cutlets are cooked to a textbook shade of juicy pink. The fat has been rendered, the skin is crisp and the buerre noisette and toasted hazelnut crumbs add a nutty and textural enhancement.


28-day dry aged black Angus sirloin with spring onion, shallots and juniper $31

The 28-day dry aged black Angus sirloin feels a little chewy by comparison, although I am a fan of the charred and caramelised spring onions and sticky jus.


Hapuka, green papaya, baby cos and ginger $31

For a lighter main, the hapuka delivers on all fronts, a hunk of fish cooked to flake-forking tenderness that we swipe through polka dot dollops of of green and white.


Broccoli, satay sauce and cashew nuts $8

We order a side of vegetables on our waitstaff's suggestion. Roasted broccoli sounds delicious but in hindsight the satay sauce is an odd inclusion, especially as its pervasive creamy spiciness jars against all of our mains. The broccoli is cooked to the point of soggy softness which does make me appreciate the crunch of smashed cashews even more.


Terramisu $14
Miso oil, mascarpone and coffee

Terramisu continues the Asian-Italian pattern, a mash-up that works well here. It's a playful presentation of umami-laden miso soil scattered across mascarpone cream.


Green $14
Matcha creme, pistachio crumble and mint ice cream

Green is a triple combo of matcha, pistachio and mint. Do they work together? I'm not sure. The match and mint don't feel like a natural pairing, even if the pistachio works valiantly between the two.


Spring $14
Yoghurt pannacotta with melon and almonds

The most unassuming dessert ends up being my favourite. Yoghurt pannacotta is impressive in its nuanced subtlety and delicate fragility. There's a distinct echo of honeydew melon in the aerated foam. This is just the kind of dessert to leave you refreshed and content after a long meal.


Chocolate meringue with jam

We linger so long in the dining room (there's only been one other two-top present throughout the entire Sunday lunch service) that we score complimentary petit fours, chocolate meringue shards with jam. A bottle of peach-cello also materialises - it's like limoncello but made with peaches instead of lemon - and everyone is treated to a shot.

In a suburb cloaked with the aroma of charcoal chicken, Noi is not like any of its neighbours. Even seafood restaurant Fich next door looks to do a heavier trade in takeaway than dine-in. Noi means "we" or "us" in Italian. Here's hoping Noi finds its tribe.

Noi Restaurant
108 Audley Street, Petersham, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9337 7377

Opening hours
Lunch Thursday to Sunday 12pm-3pm
Dinner Thursday to Tuesday 5pm-10pm
Closed on Wednesdays


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Totti's, Bondi

Been missing Pinbone? Good news! While the Pinbone team is still on hiatus, you can now find Mike Eggert on the pans at Totti's. It's the newest venture by Merivale, a casual Italian eatery tucked into The Royal Bondi hotel. Expect lots of shareable dishes for large groups, tasty snacks for the peckish and some rocking great pastas.


Totti's menu and 1L of orange cordial $3 
No-groni seedlip spice, monin bitter and palermo rouge $15

The courtyard is definitely where you want to be, a breezy open space overlooked by the kitchen. It's here you can watch Eggert commanding the pass, with woodfire expert Khan Danis (ex-Rockpool) keeping a close watch over everything in the Josper charcoal oven.

Settle in with a cocktail or mocktail under the olive trees (craned in specifically for Totti's). They even have $3 jugs of orange cordial (weak, but hey $3!) with all proceeds going to OneWave, a non-profit community group that focuses on surfing for mental health .


Burrata, olives and salumi

The internal dining room is where you'll find all the salumi and the wood-fired oven. It's a cosy space but the room can be prone to stuffiness depending on how hot it is outside. Large ceiling fans do help with airflow.


Prepping burrata behind vine tomatoes 

But there's plenty to watch here, as staff shave salumi, scoop out plump balls of burrata from urns, and drizzle everything with grassy green extra virgin olive oil.


Wood-fired bread fresh out of the oven

You also get to spy on all the wood-fired oven action, watching the dough being teased into shape before a smoky interlude in the oven.


Wood-fired bread $10 each

The wood-fired bread puffs up into blistered pillows, like a fluffy space ship that's flown too close to the sun.


Burrata $8 

You'll definitely want to order a round of wood-fired bread, ripping apart its piping hot crust to sop up the spillage of cream from the gleaming pouch of burrata. The stuffed mozzarella is milky sweet, splashed liberally with extra virgin olive oil.


'Nduja $8 

A couple of antipasto favourites have made the leap from Pinbone's former pop-up, Dirty Italian Disco. That includes the burrata, chicken liver parfait and the 'nduja. The latter isn't half as spicy as its former incarnation - a good or bad thing depending on where you sit on the Scoville scale - but it's still a ridiculously addictive porky paste.


Pastas at Totti's 

Whatever you do, make sure you order a plate of pasta. Eggert's commitment to handmade pastas is a joy to behold.


Lamb ragu with pappardelle $29 

Pappardelle with lamb ragu sounds more like a winter dish but there's a lightness to the passata sauce, mixed thoroughly through lazy folds of wide and silky pappardelle. The lamb is soft and tender.


Fregola with calamari and mussels $29

Calamari, mussels and fresh parsley brighten a bowl of gently chewy fregola. The seafood is cooked just so.


Linguine with spinach, herbs and walnut pangrattato $25 

I'd been keen to order the spinach linguine and it comes up the goods. There's much to like about the tangle of al dente linguine, tossed through with pesto and covered in mixed green herbs, parmesan and walnut pangrattato. The crunch of the fried bread (pangrattato) is oh so good.


Rigatoni with milk-braised pork and chilli $28 

Short tubes of rigatoni pasta are the ideal vessel for holding a rubble of milk-braised pork and a good shower of parmesan. It's a simple celebration of pasta with meat and cheese, anointed generously with olive oil.


Prawn casarecce $29 

My favourite, though, is the prawn casarecce, the hand-rolled pasta providing a chewy contrast to the plump curls of prawn. There's an intensity of prawn flavour to the sauce, as though it has been made with prawn head stock. It's enough to make you stop for air with the first mouthful, before you greedily grab another forkful and plough on.


Bannockburn roast chicken $39 

Admittedly the Bannockburn roast chicken isn't as good as the spatchcock with lemon and tarragon butter at Dirty Italian Disco, but there's a fine wood-fired char to the skin. The flesh is a little dry though, although somewhat rectified with a good squeeze of fresh lemon.


800g wood-grilled rib eye steak $89

We have much more fun attacking the wood-grilled rib eye steak. It's a beast of a cut at 800g, cooked so the flesh has a caramelised crust. I scored the bone, and gnawed off every last skerrick of fat and flesh.


Baked eggplant, chilli and pangrattato $11

There's a wide selection of vegetarian sides, mostly likely numbering eight if you remove a few rogue meat ingredients. The baked eggplant is the kind of dish you almost want to order with bread, so you can scoop out and savour the soft and sticky flesh.


Zucchini, mint and parmesan salad $9

And while the zucchini, mint and parmesan salad looks a little too simple at first, there's a surprise puddle of what tastes like ricotta cheese at the bottom. It lends a pleasing creaminess to the super fresh raw zucchini rounds covered in a blanket of finely grated parmesan cheese.


Roasted Roma beans, pancetta and red pepper dressing $11

Roasted Roman beans are amped up with a red capsicum sauce spiked with pancetta. There's a delicious sweetness to the beans although some pods are noticeably more fibrous than others.


Char-grilled broccolini, almond and anchovy $11

And I can't get enough of the char-grilled broccolini, heavily scented with smoke and scattered through with roasted almond chunks and bits of anchovy.


Broccolini in the Josper charcoal oven

The broccolini gets its smokiness from the glowing coals in the Josper oven.


300g veal rump schnitzel $29

Our group of nine is still peckish so we order another round of pastas (the pork rigatoni and the prawn casarecce) as well as the veal rump schnitzel.


Inside the veal schnitzel

There's a small issue with the batter tasting a little undercooked and gluey - an issue that could have been avoided with another 30 seconds in the deep-fryer - but the veal itself is soft and juicy. It's a shame, especially as we savour the perfectly salty crunch of fried capers and wispy curls of parmesan cheese.


Ice cream sandwich $8

Dessert-wise, we order everything on the menu except for the cheese platter. For maximum fun, get the ice cream sandwich, a nostalgic throwback to childhood. What impresses here is how the ice cream sandwich, when done well, can be so good. That means a proper strawberry ice cream - a little bit sweet, a little bit tangy - sandwiched alongside vanilla and chocolate ice cream between fresh and crunchy wafer sheets.


Orange flan $12

On a hot summer's day, you'll want the orange flan, its soft set custard covered in a rubble of orange granita.


Cherry and stone fruit crostata (tart of the day) $12

The tart of the day is a cherry and stone fruit crostata when we dine. It's a fine tasting tart, with buttery pastry holding big pockets of sweet and sticky fruit. A big dollop of cream on the side makes it all go down a treat.


Tiramisu $12

And you bet we ordered the tiramisu. A purist would insist the sponge fingers should have been soaked to be a little softer in texture, but there's still much to like here, from the soft clouds of whipped cream to the sweet debris of chocolate across the top.



Judging by the business of the dining room, the crowds have already found Totti's and they don't look to be leaving soon. Grab your mates and kick back in the courtyard either before or after a trip to the beach.






Totti's at The Royal Bondi
283 Bondi Road, Bondi, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9114 7371

Opening hours
Monday to Saturday 11.30am-12am
Sunday 11.30am-10pm


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