Top fine-dining chef opens quality pizza joint in Manly, and this cheesy number is his slice of choice
LuMi chef Federico Zanellato wants to show his community what good pizza should taste like.
Federico Zanellato, the owner-chef at Pyrmont’s two-hatted LuMi restaurant, has already joined Sydney’s new-wave bakeries with Lode Pies. Now he has pizza in his sights: Last weekend he opened Avoja in Manly.
“I live five minutes’ drive from here,” Zanellato says. The chef passed the vacated Ironbark Woodfired Pizza site for a year, mulling over plans to reboot the space.
“[I want to do this] for my community, for the friends of my kids who go to school here, to show them what good pizza should taste like,” he says citing a shortage of quality pizzerias in the north.
Zanellato refurbished the existing wood-fire pizza oven, shipped in some new furniture, and recruited Matteo Ernandes, a seasoned pizzaiola with Matteo Double Bay and Da Orazio at Bondi Beach on his CV.
“We selected the flour together. Matteo is hands-on through the whole process: he mixes the dough, ferments it, stretches it and cooks the pizza,” he says.
The duo has settled on a pizza style Zanellato describes as contemporary rather than traditional Neapolitan. “We use a slightly lower temperature in the oven so it can crisp up without burning. We get rid of a lot of the moisture so it’s not as chewy as a traditional Neapolitan pizza.”
Zanellato has a couple of early recommendations. The four-cheese pizza ($26) with manchego, smoked provolone, gorgonzola and ricotta, finished with some drizzled truffle honey and candied walnut. The fine-dining chef is also a fan of the 𝄒nduja pizza ($25) with red capsicum and spicy salami.
The chef and his LuMi team also created a selection of small dishes for the menu, with a tuna crudo (with nectarine and capers), octopus with chickpeas, and zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta, parmesan and lemon. It wouldn’t be a Sydney menu of the moment without burrata so Avoja offers it as an add-on with garlic bread.
Avoja is a group effort spin-off from the LuMi team. Zanellato’s partners in the northside venture are LuMi restaurant manager Angelo Cristella and sommelier Piero Fonseca.
What does Avoja mean? Zanellato says it’s Roman slang for “hell yeah”.
Open lunch Sat-Sun; dinner Tue-Sun.
208 Pittwater Road, Manly, avoja.com.au
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Scott Bolles writes the weekly Short Black column in Good Food.