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We all dream of that Italian restaurant. One where there are only half a dozen tables, where the walls are stacked with a hodgepodge of framed, vaguely familiar continental references, and where the staff all wear matching soccer shirts in staunch tribute to their beloved Napoli.
Well, it actually exists.
In fact, Napoli Centro has been sitting on the same street corner next to Bardwell Park train station for more than a decade.
The vibe
Everything’s a tight squeeze in here. Somehow they’ve made space for a wood-fired oven, which blazes away in one corner, while the clientele are back-to-back and elbow-to-elbow across a tightly packed front room, spilling out to a handful of tables on the street.
With folks so close, there’s always an atmosphere. A slightly chaotic, always cheery hum of conversation, as waitstaff squeeze between gaps in the furniture.
It’s family owned and somehow it shows. Owner and eccentric maître d’, Vincenzo Riemma, makes you feel like you’ve just shown up at his house. Around him, tiled walls are a jumble of old Italian film stars, soccer heroes and paintings of Naples.
The food
Pizza is the thing here. Living up to their jerseys, the chefs push out pizzas the Neapolitan way: puffy, blistered crusts, soft soupy centres, and plenty of char from the wood-fired oven.
There are several options, but the Margherita ($22) is more or less where you can start and end. The tomato is bright and fresh, there’s just enough mozzarella, and the base stays soft and slightly soupy in the middle. It’s simple, messy and very good.
If you want to venture out, there’s a ‘Diavolina’ ($26) with hot Italian pepperoni and olives, and a ‘Dolce Vita’ ($30) with pepperoni, honey, burrata and chilli oil.
The ‘Sausage & Rapa’ ($30) is a white pizza topped with chunks of pork sausage and broccoli rabe sautéed with garlic and chilli.
Another specialty here is Nonna’s meatballs (two for $14, four for $28). Slow-cooked for hours in a rich sauce and served with hunks of pizza bread, they’re a deeply comforting starter, or a main if you pick the ‘Spaghetti 1950s’ ($28), which drops them into a bowl of spaghetti and Napoli sauce.
Dessert is a choice of tiramisu ($10), ricotta cake ($13) or Nutella pizza with strawberries ($16). The tiramisu is big, creamy and perfectly decent, but after everything that comes before it, strangely forgettable. But at that price, we're happy.
The drinks
Napoli Centro is BYO (corkage $13-15), but has plenty behind the bar. There’s a short and very cheap list of cocktails, featuring Italian favourites like Espresso Martini ($20), Negroni ($18) and your choice of Aperol or Limoncello spritz ($15). There are also bottles of Peroni, Moretti, Menabrea and Ichnusa in the fridge, alongside a handful of Italian wines and limoncello.
Time Out tip
Make sure you get a jar of the restaurant’s house-made chilli oil for the table. A generous drizzle is our mandatory prescription for any pizza, pasta and bread… basically anything going.
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