Maestro by name, and nature: North Beach restaurant serves some of Perth’s finest pizza

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“How many reviews of pizza restaurants will my editors let me get away with?” wrote some big-talking hotshot when he accepted the plum gig of restaurant critic for WAToday and Good Food. (Hint: that big-talking hotshot was me.)

As it turns out, my editors were at zero risk of Margherita overdose. Because other than a news story announcing the opening of Casa’s pizza offshoot; a piece on the dense, calorific Detroit-style pizzas being baked by former Palestinian banker Seif al Sweilem; plus touching on the excellent pinsa on offer at the freshly hatted Threecoins & Sons, this platform has published precisely zero pizza restaurant reviews written by the new guy.

In my defence, reviewing pizza joints is kind of redundant. At least as far as does-it-taste-good? goes, anyway. When you put tomato sauce and cheese onto a bit of dough, then hit the entire thing with heat, magic happens and the whole becomes infinitely more than the sum of its parts. And let’s be real: even “bad” pizza tastes delicious, right?

I also have a theory that proximity-to-pizza-oven is another major factor in
determining pizza deliciousness. Eaters will let a lot slide if their local pizza shop is within walking distance of their front door. The above hypothesis also helps explain why pizza cooked at home sparkles with a vitality one rarely finds under the hood of a cardboard takeaway box. The rise of Gozney, Ooni and other high-end home pizza ovens, it must be said, has also fuelled the rise of the home pizzaiolo: home pizzaiolos such as Andrea Brunelli, for instance.

To be fair, Brunelli is far from a weekend dough warrior. In his native Umbria in
central Italy, he worked in his family’s food factory. After migrating to Western Australia in 2011, he spent close to a decade twirling dough and tending ovens at
various pizzerias including Beaufort Street’s much-missed ACE Pizza and Dough
Pizza’s Whitford City expansion.

When pandemic lockdowns saw Brunelli lose his job, he and wife Chiara
Mezzasoma fired up their Gozney and began slinging pizza out of their garden as a bit of a laugh. It was around the time where the couple were moving 60 pizzas a
night that the joke got serious: so much so that a real estate agent neighbour –
perhaps peeved at all the pizza-seeking randoms that were hanging around the area – suggested the couple find a proper home for their dough-making hustle.

And so in September 2020, Brunelli and Mezzasoma gave birth to their Covid baby, Maestro Sourdough Pizza.

You’ll find Maestro on Flora Terrace in North Beach. Eventually. Even with the aid of Google Maps, the shop’s dimly lit signage can be tricky to pick out in the dark. Look out for the four gable-roofed buildings in a row. The space itself (a one-time pasta joint) is best described as functional. The pizza kitchen is clad with white splashback subway tiles with the day’s specials neatly written on them in black and red markers.

The outdoor dining area (bring a jacket) offers views back into the shop as well as the cooks working the Moretti Forni Neapolis oven, a stone-based oven with a squat chamber that not only helps it get hot fast, but also retain that all-important heat: a crucial element in creating your classic thin, puffy, quick-cooking Naples-style pizza.

Equally interesting to note is that this oven is entirely electric. While wood-fired
ovens might be synonymous with Naples-style pizza, more and more pizzerias are going electric and the results are good. Maestro is no exception.

The closer you get to the shop, that stronger the stirring scent of Eau de Pizzeria
becomes. The scorched semolina used to prevent the dough from sticking to things it shouldn’t. That tell-tale char you only get from a ripping hot oven – electric, wood-fired or otherwise. These are encouraging signs that you’ve made an excellent pizza shop decision.

The arrival of the good stuff confirms your hunch.

One of the main issues I’ve encountered with Naples-style pizzas is that they often arrive at the table with a soupy rather than sturdy base. Perhaps the oven wasn’t hot enough to cook the dough properly or completely dry out the sugo (tinned San Marzano tomatoes, naturally). Perhaps the kitchen was heavy-handed with the toppings. Whatever the issue, wet isn’t an eating quality most want in pizza. The pizza at Maestro is not wet. If all pizza bases were built like this – crisp, strong, featherweight – at least a quarter of the world’s problems would disappear overnight.

The brittle, gently charred crust (the cornicione in Italian) has real lift-off and is
punctuated by the occasional exit wound caused by air pockets blasting through the dough. While this review isn’t the forum to delve into forensic detail about the dough’s fermentation process (two days, multiple stages, exxy Caputo Nuvola Super flour) the take-home is simple: this is very fine, very excellent pizza that is a friend to your digestive system.

The pizza menu is split into tomato-sauced base toppings (10) and white mozzarella-based variants (9) with a mix of traditional names and the occasional pun. White pale blobs of fior di latte – the cow’s milk equivalent of buffalo mozzarella – are the star of the Margherita ($24), I appreciated the supporting role played by grated Parmesan and the way it melted into golden, spindly patches that created a cool mottled effect against the sugo. Leaves of fresh basil and a tiny marble of bocconcini cheese are the finishing touches on an elite expression of Italy’s culinary foodways.

While not as well-known as the Margherita, the Fresh Prince ($28) also speaks
clearly to Italianate food traditions. While a downpour of pieces of würstel (Viennese sausage) and French fries might seem like some stoner experiment gone wrong, this combination is known – and loved – in the Old Country as pizza Americana. It, too, is a joy to eat, especially if you’ve supplemented your pizza order with a bowl of juicy meatballs ($20; each a touch smaller than a tennis ball) and have worked your way through the slices of house sourdough it’s served with. French fries plus a rich Neapolitan sauce equals a good time.

While I’d gladly come here just to eat pizza, the rest of the menu contains enough Italian(y) hits to bulk out a meal: think arancini ($20), garlic bread ($10) and potato croquettes ($16).

A small selection of pastas that get finished in the oven are also available. A rectangular baking tray of dainty gnocchi dressed with a creamy sauce of zucchini, prawns and smoked scamorza cheese ($30) wasn’t what I was picturing when I spied it on the menu, but I found myself returning to it more often than I expected.

While nicely lush in texture, the house tiramisu ($14) tasted a little light-on
in terms of coffee-ness. Perhaps I should have gone the Nutella doughnuts ($16)
instead?

As I said earlier, reviewing pizza joints is kind of redundant, because even when it’s not good, pizza will always be a little bit good. If you’ve ever had one of those weeks, the combination of a takeaway pizza plus a bottle of wine and switching your phone to airplane mode remains one of the most effective Friday night panaceas ever invented. But when you unearth a really good pizza joint – one that elegantly demonstrates the kind of alchemy that happens when flour, water, salt, tomato and fire all put their heads together – it’s your moral obligation to share it with others.

Especially for the big-talking hotshots of the world. An essential name in Perth pizza best-of discussions.