BOOtoo
Nothing scary about these inventive pizzas.
If you've ever driven down Fitzgerald Street towards the city, you might have happened to glance left just after passing Robertson Park and noticed a smattering of tables and chairs on the grass sidewalk a little way down Stuart Street. I have, and every time it's filled me with the sort of neck-craning curiosity liable to cause a traffic accident. What's going on here? Is it verge collection week in front of an offbeat furniture store? Perth's keener coffee beans will know that it's actually the site of Boo Espresso, a hole-in-the-wall caffeine-slinger opened in 2015 by Christian Simone, formerly of Northbridge Coffee Roasters.
Boo Espresso has made it onto many lists of Perth's top coffee spots, but after several years Simone has decided that it's time to welcome new challenges and has recently opened BOOtoo, a café-cum-pizzeria, located in nearby Bulwer Street. It's a curious space, located in a former patisserie that had doubled as a home; dining areas are located in various rooms off a main corridor, in addition to the roomy shopfront. Looking through the windows when we arrived, the place seemed all but empty – but once inside it was apparent there was a large family celebrating a birthday out the back, and a few other couples and families hidden down the corridor. The transitory nature of the offering here also affects the ambiance; as the place functions as a café during the day, various typical café accoutrement inhabit the space. We were sat, for example, next to a shelf of particularly vibrant Keep Cups. On the other hand (and tipping the scales back toward BOOtoo's night-time guise), one end of the front room is occupied by a pizza oven so large it would sleep a family of four. The visual juxtaposition might be a little confusing, but this place isn't trying to be a restaurant – so who cares?
“Come dusk, pizza is obviously the name of the game, but there are a few other snacky options…”
Come dusk, pizza is obviously the name of the game, but there are a few other snacky options on the menu as well, such as the BOOballs ($14), large balls of egg and cheese, fried and served in a bowl of tomato and capsicum sauce, with crusty white bread. The balls were quite dense – not soft and oozing – but they weren't stodgy, and when topped with some of the simple sauce on a slice of bread, not bad at all. More cheese in and around the balls could have given the dish some extra oomph. You can also get chips, olives, and mixed antipasto platters.
The pizzas are divided into red sauce base pies and what's labelled as "gourmet base" pies; essentially white sauce based pizzas. Toppings and combinations at BOOtoo are inventive and unashamedly non-traditional. A return visit seems necessary in order to try an "Arthur Curry", a seafood medley with fresh chili, ginger and garlic on a San Marzano base, and a "Prince", featuring saffron-infused mozzarella, porcini mushrooms, house-made truffle paste and walnuts. A list of the day's specials included the inimitable "Anne Frank'd"; pork sausage, fior di latte and San Marzano tomatoes, with chips rolled into the pizza dough. It sounds simultaneously like the best and worst thing you've ever heard.
“…the Toto pizza was an instant hit.”
We opted for the "Toto", from the daily specials – a red sauce pizza with prawns, bacon, fior di latte and fresh basil pesto ($26), and from the gourmet base section of the menu, "La Carbonara", fior di latte, pancetta, savoury zabaione and pecorino cheese ($27). Both pizzas came out on good dough, properly blistered and charred from the huge oven. The slices were droopy but not soggy, and the crusts properly chewy – these are decent pizzas. In my opinion, bacon and prawn is always a winning combo, so the Toto pizza was an instant hit. The basil pesto, swirled around the pizza in concentric circles, could have been a touch more potent. As you would know if you were paying attention before, the La Carbonara reads in name and content like a pizza version of everyone's guiltiest pleasure pasta – exciting. The zabaione, given a savoury twist (traditionally, it's an Italian concoction of egg, sugar and sweet wine served as a dessert), stood in as the carbonara sauce. Pancetta, black pepper and sharp pecorino provided richness. You might not find this sort of thing in the back alleys of Naples, the birthplace of pizza, or even at Perth's very own pizza high water mark, Monsterella, but BOOtoo certainly gets points for creativity.
Although we were all but alone in the front room of the venue when we arrived, over the course of the night more than a few tables wandered in. Not everyone had pizza, either – some groups seemed content with their BYO wine and a few snacks, and someone even stopped by for a takeaway coffee. For the locals around Hyde Park, BOOtoo might as well be an extension of their living room – instead of having a chat on your sofa with your housemates, bring your bottle here and have some antipasti. BOOtoo strikes me as still figuring out its exact niche, but the essential foundations are there – an appealingly laid back vibe, great pizza, BYO (with no corkage!). I hope the locals get around this place, cause it's well and truly here for them.