Meet the Palestinian former banker running a Detroit-style pizza shop in Perth’s south
Operating out of a Southern River grocery, Detroit Square Pies makes just 80 calorific, rectangular pizzas each day and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Perth’s multicultural fabric makes for some intriguing dining prospects.
Last month, I ate great pao de quijo, moqueca and other Brazilian soul food classics cooked by a talented French chef-turned-baker that called Rio di Janeiro home for three years.
You might have read about the Chinese-Malaysian chef with Nobu pedigree who has opened a restaurant in Vic Park dedicated to tonkatsu, Japan’s famous fried pork cutlet.
Everyone’s favourite Texas-style barbecue restaurant run by a former middle manager at Woolworths, meanwhile, looks well on the way to becoming part of Australian dining lore.
Despite all this, “Detroit-style pizza cooked by a Palestinian former banker in a Southern River grocery store” wasn’t something I had on my 2024 bingo card.
To be fair, I don’t think Seif al Sweilem (the ex-banker in question) expected his career trajectory to unfold how it did, either. It seems that the Detroit-style pizza he ate while at the University of Michigan as an exchange student left a bigger mark on him than he realised. So much so that after opening his Middle Eastern grocery store Mazaj (an Arabic word meaning “a good mood”) in 2021 and serving continental rolls and other deli standards, al Sweilem switched tack last year and ditched the contis to follow his passion.
“The rolls were nice, but they weren’t great,” said al Sweilem, who launched Detroit Square Pies in November.
“I wouldn’t eat them every day. But Detroit-style pizza? I could eat that every hour. Seriously, I love it.”
While I’m impressed by al Sweilem’s enthusiasm, I personally would struggle putting away Detroit-style pizza (or any single dish) every hour. Detroit-style pizza, for the uninitiated, is a regional American style of pizza notable for its rectangular shape, thick puffy crust and not-insignificant quantities of cheese including, crucially, the crisp lacy cheese bunting wrapped around each pizza’s edge.
Although Detroit-style pizza has been around since the mid-1940s, it hit the big-time a decade ago after Detroit pizza chef Shawn Randazzo was named world champion pizza maker at the 2012 World Pizza Expo in Las Vegas and started using “Detroit-style” to describe what he and so many locals simply knew as pizza.
Perth – and indeed Palestine – might be a long way from Motor City, but that didn’t deter al Sweilem from diving headfirst into all things Detroit and delicious. After a year spent developing and trialling recipes (Randazzo’s teachings were a constant presence in al Sweilem’s journey), our man felt he had something unusual and delicious that would resonate with Perth eaters. He was right.
A Detroit-style pie is an imposing rectangle of cheese (a house blend consisting mainly of mozzarella and brick cheese: a white American cheddar) and dough. While they might be smaller than, say, your standard-issue Naples-style woodfired pizza – the pizzas here are eight inches by 10 inches: the traditional dimensions of the blue steel workshop trays that these pizzas were originally baked in – a significant hunk of puffy, focaccia-style crumb is hiding below that molten cheese surface. I wouldn’t recommend eating one on your own unless you had just broken some sort of CrossFit record.
Having said all that, the dough here is wonderfully light rather than stodgy and dense: a result, says al Sweilem, of a long 72-hour ferment to lighten and aerate the dough. The bases are then shaped individually in each tray and get a final eight-hour rise before they’re ready to be baked. It’s a lot of work, which explains why our man preps just 80 pizzas a day with zero plans to increase production. On weekends when he offers the pizzas for lunchtime, he might be out of pizza by dinner.
While there is an excellent margherita on offer – note the two tyre-mark-like stripes of marinara sauce on the margherita: a nod to Detroit’s automotive history – Detroit Square Pies isn’t afraid to do things its way.
Chicken pizza options abound. Barbecue sauce is squiggled onto many a pie. All the meats – pepperoni, bacon, sausage – are halal and made of beef. There are also two sweet pizzas made using Ferrero Rocher and spiced Biscoff spread.
Pizza purists might, if they were being kind, describe the menu as “untraditional”. Personally, I’m going with intriguing. And delicious. God – whatever you call her/him/they/it – bless Perth’s multicultural fabric.
Detroit Square Pies by Mazaj Foods is at 3/466 Warton Rd, Southern River and open Thursday to Sunday.
Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.