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Sweet music or kitchen cacophony? Nick Dent braves Paddo pizzeria Love Supreme.
Longtime Sydney residents remember Arthur’s Pizza fondly. Hip, dark and affordable, with Jim Jarmusch movie posters on the walls, the Paddo pizza parlour was a must for everyone from the starving student to the tired shopoholic.
That was then. This is now. The Arthur’s team have reopened down the hill a couple of hundred metres, opposite the Victoria Barracks. Love Supreme has large, high-ceilinged premises decked out in rustic-industrial style; a largely certified organic menu; and a name borrowed from jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s seminal 1964 album.
Love Supreme seems to be doing pretty well. We arrive at 5.45 on ANZAC Day and an hour later the place is full; a line of takeaway customers snakes out the door; and we’ve already heard ‘Happy Birthday’ sung twice. Yes, it’s that kind of place: big, noisy, rowdy even. The waiters all look slightly panicked and their attention often has to be attracted; to their credit, though, they do what you ask fairly promptly.
An entrée special of battered zucchini flowers with pine nuts and ricotta ($9) is unexpectedly delicious. The batter is not too heavy and the aioli is a good match. The cabbage and fennel salad ($9.50) is quite tart, as you would expect; aged grana cheese is a tasty addition, but I’m not sure about the dressing.
A medium ‘Smiley’ pizza ($23.90) is an unpretentious effort with large chunks of Italian sausage, red onion and pecorino. It’s far from gourmet stuff, but it tastes pretty good. Ossobucco ($20) is tender, if a little dry; the sauce outshines the flavour of the shank itself, but its soft bed of polenta goes down a treat. Bucatini vongole with chilli, garlic and olive oil ($18) features excellent spaghetti tubes and tiny little clams packed with flavour – but where’s the chilli, people?
While waiting for our affogatos ($5.90) we were handed sparklers and instructed to light them in tribute to one of the birthday girls. We wondered if 50-odd sparklers burning simultaneously was enough to set off the smoke alarms. It was.
Incidentally, by day, it’s a bakery called Sourdough Sisters, which sounds like a lesbian sex act the particulars of which I can’t begin to imagine. By night, Love Supreme is not a bad place at all for an Italian feed, although I’m glad they didn’t name it after Coltrane’s other famous album, My Favorite Things. That would be pushing it.
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