A couple of Canberra imports are turning heads in a winsome heritage woolstore tenancy – and they had input from one of the UK’s top pizza chefs.
It’s fun to watch the evolution of a particular cuisine. Or more specifically, diners’ evolving relationship with a cuisine.
Take ramen. When the Japanese noodle soup first broke in Australia, it was on the back of tonkotsu, the creamy pork-bone broth that fast became a soul-warming favourite around the country. But tonkotsu was just a beach head, and soon ramen heads were tarting it up with shoyu, shio or miso variations, or experimenting with tsukemen and chicken paitan ramen.
Whenever this happens, there will be diehards who swear by whatever came first, but you can’t stand in the way of a diner’s curiosity often fuelled by international travel and social media.
Pizza is no different. Post the fast-food heyday of your Pizza Huts and Domino’s, 400-degree, 60-second woodfired Neapolitan pizza became king in Brisbane, and indeed around Australia. And it still is, but now you can easily find pizza al taglio – tray-baked pizza sold by the slice – and flatbread-based pinsa, both popular in Rome; Chicago-style deep dish pizza; and Detroit-style pan pizza.
It’s odd, then, that it’s taken so long for New York-style pizza – with its thin but firm base and crisped crust – to take off in this city. You can find it at Mr Badger’s in Woolloongabba (alongside Chicago deep-dish) and Manhattan Pizza in Kangaroo Point, but (other than your more late night grab-and-go spots like New York Slice) not so much elsewhere.
Perhaps that’s why Donnie’s seems so precisely pitched. Jackson McLoughlin and Nickolas Kruckel’s tidy little restaurant opened on Vernon Terrace in Teneriffe late last month and has been doing buzzy trade ever since, locals drawn by the promise of NYC-style pizza as well as snacks and charcuterie.
“I’ve been to Italy and have been a big fan of Neapolitan style pizza,” McLoughlin says. “But I don’t like that you feel like you have to eat it with a knife and fork sometimes. I like that structure of a New York-style pizza. It lets the ingredients shine and is more satisfying to eat.”
McLoughlin and Kruckel are Canberra imports and while McLoughlin has a lengthy background working in food and beverage, neither are chefs. So they hired Alim Nayil as a consultant. Nayil operates Patio Pizza, which was recently rated by UK pizza chefs as one of the 50 best pizza restaurants in that country.
Nayil wound up spending four days in Brisbane helping McLoughlin and Kruckel perfect their dough and cooking techniques.
“I picked him up at the airport at 10pm and we came straight to the shop and put a load of dough on,” McLoughlin says. “There’s a lot of advice out there about pizza dough but there was no agenda with Alim and he took all the guesswork out of it.”
With Nayil’s help, McLoughlin and Kruckel developed a menu of eight pizzas, roughly between 11 and 12 inches in diameter (so, note: don’t expect to purchase by the slice from the more traditional 20-inch size you’d find in NYC), all baked in the same PizzaMaster deck oven that’s popular in US pizza shops.
You might order the Gabagool (tomato meatball ragu, capicola, mozzarella, whipped ricotta and basil), the ’Nduja (tomato, ’nduja, hot honey, fior di latte, mozzarella, whipped ricotta, basil) or the Vodka (vodka sauce, burrata, mozzarella, parmesan and basil).
The pizzas are complemented by snacks such as lamb backstrap skewers with agrodolce, salsa verde and caramelised yoghurt; pork and beef meatballs with tomato sugo, parmesan, arugula pesto and focaccia; and Philly cheesesteak spring rolls filled with wagyu beef, capsicum, provolone and American cheese.
“I didn’t want it to be just a takeaway pizza shop,” McLoughlin says. “The snacks are meant to be elevated and tie in with the wine and the cocktails.”
Talking wines and cocktails, the former are represented on a super tight 17-bottle list that skews towards Australian indie growers, with a few heavy hitting reds thrown in; while cocktails tend to twist the classics, with a Negroni made with mandarin-infused gin, a spicy Margarita that shakes in hot honey, and a Sour that mixes gin, melon, coconut and matcha syrup all present and correct. There are also three beers on tap.
“It’s been surprising to me how well the wine has been doing,” McLoughlin says. “There’s a real mixed demographic living in this area and everything has been selling, so I guess we have that balance right. But I think we’ll add to the list over time.”
The restaurant’s fitout in one of the heritage woolstore buildings is relatively straightforward but a nice switch-up from former tenants Siffredi’s. McLoughlin’s carpenter father travelled from Canberra to help produce a fetching little venue of timber counter tops, and brick and tile features. Like its popular neighbours, Zero Fox and Aji Spice House, much of the seating is outside – in Donnie’s case on tile-topped high tables, the restaurant’s slick branding accounting for the rest of its charm.
“It’s only been two weeks, but it seems like everyone has responded well,” McLoughlin says. “It’s not about a race to the top, but just making sure people are happy and making sure the venue becomes part of the local community.”
Open Wed-Thu 3pm-10pm, Fri-Sat 12pm-11pm, Sun 12pm-10pm
36 Vernon Terrace, Teneriffe
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
