Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Lucky number trentacinque (Italian for ‘thirty five’) of my sojourn up High Street, Northcote was Lievita (Italian for ’Lievita’). There are only so many war-cupboard dinners (tinned food stock for zombie apocalypse/tomorrow when the war begins/CBF going to the supermarket) one can have in a row, before one should just go to the supermarket or take the fun option: walking up High Street to purchase nicer food that someone with legitimate cooking talents has made!
I chose fun!
Lievita is a romanesque newcomer to High Street and one of a kind too. A Roman style pizzeria. Pizza al taglio. Say what? Pizza slices that have been cut to customer preferential sizing. I haven’t been to Rome. But when I was a young child of the corn, I did enjoy wearing an oversized ‘Italia’ T-shirt that my aunty and uncle gave me from when they went…without me. So you know, I pretended I had been. One of my many ‘white lies’, like how I had been to Disneyland and how I had a twin brother who died in the war. THE WAR. But I’ve been to ‘Continental Europe’ once when I visited Berlin, ja. And also spent substantial time in Zurich airport, before my harrowing flight to Thailand, when an angry pair of strong Russian women refused to let me recline my chair by jamming their stocky legs firmly in the back of it and then yelled about the lack of room they would have if my chair was pushed back. All the while, HAVING RECLINED THEIR OWN CHAIRS.
Don’t get me started. Anyway, at Lievita, they make these giant how-do-you-say rectangular SLABS of pizza, with dough that has risen for 72 hours (so much more time and effort put into this than my war-cupboard dinners), with all the different flavours and colours of the arcobaleno (Italian for ‘rainbow’). [Also, FYI, ‘unicorno’ is Italian for ‘unicorn’]
And then you choose which flavours you want (because it would be presumptuous if they chose for you) and how much you want and then they cut you a slice for you with SCISSORS. Romanesque scissors. And then they weigh it, like at a deli. And you pay by weight! Eccelente!
The meal-weighing reminded me of this bain-marie Chinese joint in America I visited unwillingly, that the Chinatown bus from Boston Chinatown to New York City Chinatown would stop at halfway. And everyone would scramble off the bus to grab a big styrofoam container, pile it to the brim with luke-warm food that had been in a food-bath-trough all day, then weigh-and-pay and steam up the bus with their great big stinkin meal tubs, so that we would arrive in Chinatown smelling like marinated something. But not marinated in a good way. Pretty much everyone complied with this food option, except the woman who complained endlessly that we hadn’t stopped at Roy Rogers, a bog standard fast food establishment fried chicken, burgers and roast beef sliders. Oh, and mac’n’cheese. So I can kind of understand her being upset. But she banged on about “Roy Rahhgers” this and “Roy Rahhgers” that for the rest of the trip. If she was banging on about Lievita instead I would have had more sympathy…because do you know what?!
Let me give you a pizza my mind; without having been to Rome, I now know and fully appreciate why we do as the Romans do.
The pizza at Lievita is phenomenal. Pantheon-omenal. By the Basilica of St Peter’s! By the fountain of Trevi! That 72 hour risen dough is the most delicious dough I have ever consumed! BELLISI-DOUGH! I had three Colloseum sized slices, one with four cheeses, another with broccoli and pancetta and potato, and the third full of margarita style MAGIC.
They can snip me a slice o dat pizza any time.
Next!
https://www.facebook.com/hungrywolfofhighstreet
www.hungrywolfofhighstreet.com