Sega has taken over the defunct cafe space inside Soap Spot on Elgin Street.
The only thing more unusual than the location of Sega is the pizza it serves. Inside a functioning laundromat on Elgin Street in Carlton, the team behind nearby Italian restaurant Al Dente Enoteca are putting their own spin on a style of stuffed pizza found across Italy.
While cafes in laundromats – functioning or former – aren’t novel in Melbourne, what’s cooking in this one has already caught the attention of Soap Spot’s clientele, largely residents of the surrounding apartment buildings. Sega deals in what the team has dubbed pizza chiusa (“closed” in Italian), inspired by the stuffed pizza farcita found across Italy. Instead of topping the pizza, the good stuff goes inside, creating something like a circular sandwich. At Sega, they cut each pizza base like a bread roll, load it with your fillings of choice and toast it until golden and gooey.
Vignali has collaborated with South Melbourne’s Focacceria Pugliese on a custom pizza dough that’s par-cooked in a wood-fired oven. It’s delivered daily, ready to be filled before it finishes cooking in the sandwich press. More classic options include ham and cheese, spicy salami with fior di latte and Vignali’s own chilli paste, and a four-cheese combo of provolone, mozzarella, stracciatella and brie. Others are more cheffy, like one with rare roast beef from Al Dente and horseradish. It’s $22 for a full pizza, $15 for half, and $15 for toasties made with sourdough instead.
The offering also includes drinks, such as matcha lattes and St Ali coffee, as well as a green-tinged hybrid tiramisu that combines both products for maximum caffeination. Plus, Sega is the only place you can get Tarts Anon sweets outside the latter’s own locations, so you might find the pastry cabinet lined with anything from pecan slices to tiny rhubarb tarts.
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