Portone Wood Fired Pizza
Rear of 246-252 Carlisle Street (park in Coles carpark)
East St Kilda
Note: I swear, sometimes I think I should change the name of this blog to Fresh Pizza. I guess I could argue that Bread is a wide term that encompasses a range of yeasted and unyeasted products, of which pizza is but a single subset…
Mr B looked this joint up on Urbanspoon and decided to go for it based on proximity to our old house and very high ratings. He called to book a table and we were off!
Portone Wood Fired Pizza is located at the back of Carlisle Street, and is actually quite hard to find. It’s near Coles, off the carpark, and you walk up a semi-deserted (well, it is evening after all) little arcade and into an area that’s semi-outside seating and a takeaway pizza shop. You totally DON’T need to call to book a table, it’s not that kind of place – much more of a takeaway pizza joint with some seating (but still nice to sit around and eat, and they will give you table service rather than ordering up at the counter or anything like that).
In the absence of knowledge, we ordered three pizzas (I’d just played basketball, but honestly this was way too greedy of us!) – a confit garlic foccacia (which turned out to be a LARGE pizza, see picture below), and one large pizza for each of us.
This turned out to be altogether WAY TOO MUCH FOOD. Don’t do it kids. Don’t make the same mistake we did!
Yep, those are confit cloves of garlic right there.
The garlic pizza was good, and garlicky as expected, with a light scattering of herbs and crusty bread to rip apart like animals while we waited for our other pizzas to come out.
I ordered the prosciutto pizza, which came with grilled figs, prosciutto, gorgozola and mascarpone sauce, and rocket. Basically a super gourmet pizza and the contrast of the salty and sweet prosciutto/gorg and figs was amaze. The size was horrendously large but I made a valiant attempt to finish the whole damn thing.
Rocket on a pizza… do you win friends with salad?
Mr Behemoth ordered the Polo pizza which came with chicken, caramelised onion on a tandoori turmeric yoghurt style base. Oh, and again – the bases were excellent here. Charred, woodfired, chewy yet crispy, everything I like in a pizza base.
Spinach on a pizza… you don’t win friends. Scratch that. You do if you’re this delicious.
We also ordered some wine and had a lovely time. The value here is amazing – the large pizzas are so good, and you get so much (seriously a family size at any other pizza joint) for under $20. They could increase their prices by $5 a pizza and still maintain custom I reckon (please don’t though, Portone!).
Writing this review has made me nostalgic for the proximity I used to have to this place. Sure, Bordello Pizza in Blackburn has the same woodfired pizza base I really like – but charges that $5 more… for a smaller pizza. If you live near Portone and haven’t tried it yet, run – don’t walk – down and get yourself a piece of the pizza action.
Fresh Bread 