Greg Bruce goes on a quest to find Auckland's best pizza.
Dante's
Dante's box-based marketing - "NZ's best pizza 2014/15" and "Metro Magazine best pizza winner 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011" - is an outrage against awards-based legitimisation but there's an outlet very close to my house. The guy called my 3-year-old
son "captain" and patted him on the head, which was a nice touch, although my son clearly didn't think so. Anyway, this isn't a review of my son and if it was I'd give him 7/10. The pizza featured great blistered patches of black on the towering cornicione, which plummeted to an ultra-thin crust. Islands of moist mozzarella sat cheekily in a sea of red. This was an extremely high-quality margherita. I could easily have voted it best pizza in the city four years in a row 10 years ago, when I was living in a tiny city apartment eating mostly cheese on toast.
Prego
We arrived five minutes before opening and stood in a queue with 30-40 presumably unemployed white people, all dressed the same. We ordered quickly, to beat the rush, and the pizza came so fast it was hard not to look at it suspiciously. The cornicione was low and the base was bready, reminiscent of the Leaning Tower range I used to enjoy at home on Saturday afternoons as a teenager. It was greasy, the pepperoni was hard, dark and ample, and little nubbins of cherry tomato were scattered across it. I continued to eat past the first slice because I didn't know what else to do with my hands. The cheese was a bit brown in places but the restaurant was one of the whitest places I'd ever seen.
Non Solo Pizza
The steep and elegant cornicione featured a moulded tail and fin, giving the pizza the appearance of a pufferfish. Food jokes typically aren't funny, and this was no exception, but I do like the taste of audacity. The pizza was perfect and beautiful, with its teetering pile of prosciutto and torn buffalo mozzarella, but It didn't feel curated or carefully designed; it felt unconstrained and unfettered: a moist little slice of joy in a world of dry conformity.
Umu
The interior was like a photographic darkroom. This isn't a review of lighting but if it was I would give Umu a 6. Their menu lists six pizzas. The names are: One, Two, Three, Four, Five and 99. The gap, presumably, is because the 99 is less a pizza and more a philosophical idea. It combines two pairs of near-identical foods - mozzarella and mascarpone, sourdough and potato - and dares us to doubt. It takes our preconceived ideas about dish composition and says, "Are you sure? Can you rationalise that with your mouth so gummy with carbs and cheese you're no longer sure how chewing works?" The 99 asks us to re-examine both our thoughts and selves. "How does this work? Why does this work?" Wrong questions! Right questions: "Who am I and why is this my first time at Umu?"