Previous SlideNext Slide

In 2022, Alessio Zullo opened Parramatta’s first proper wood-fire pizza restaurant, Fratelli Pulcinella, in his backyard. On wooden garden furniture, under fairy lights, wood-posted weather shelters and squawking lorikeets in tree branches, people flocked for family vibes, Zullo’s unflagging gusto and intoxicatingly good Neapolitan pizza cooked in a fire-fuelled red oven in one corner.

Such was its success, Zullo, a Naples pizza scholar regularly twirling pizza dough like a plate-spinner, ran out of space.

Three weeks ago, he transferred Fratelli Pulcinella to a three-level, 200-seat indoor-outdoor pizza and pasta restaurant on Church Street, smack-bang beside the soon-to-open Parramatta light rail tracks.

There may be three other pizza shops an olive’s throw away, but only one has a huge red-lettered message along its awning saying: “The real recipe for happiness is eating healthy with pleasure”.

“This is what I believe,” Zullo says. “We make good food and, during this economy, during these times of war, we just wanted to give a bit of a smile. Leave your phone in the pocket. Enjoy the moment. You know what I mean?

“We’re trying to make it as much fun as we can, creating some positive waves in Parramatta.”

Zullo’s community pizza-eating joy is boundless. He has decorated Fratelli Pulcinella’s three floors with effulgent pot plants, iron chandeliers, red, blue and yellow paint dollop-decorated tables and more slogans on the walls including, “The real pleasure, it comes from your mouth”.

Upstairs is enormous. A big communal eating area is overlooked by a balcony Zullo created for couples “getting away from boring times”, before another eating room surveying an al fresco area out back. This space, va-vavoomed with green-painted concrete, fairy lights, bigger plants, red, yellow and blue-striped tables and a high ivy-covered wall, is a nod to the now-closed backyard restaurant.

Downstairs features street-side bench seating, more tables, an open kitchen, and a cured meat cabinet between two pizza ovens, the red one from Zullo’s backyard and a green one specifically for gluten-free pizzas.

Vast, light-filled and bursting with enthusiastic people speaking Italian, Fratelli Pulcinella may never not have a free table, but, if it does, Zullo will surely fashion one himself wth zeal.

But, the real reason to come is the menu. Equally enormous, and available via a mildly confusing QR code and beeper system centred at the front counter, it features 29 pizzas among pastas, bruschetta and appetisers.

The later range from melty seasoned calamari and sweet potato chips to luscious vegetarian, cheese and salumi boards, including a magnificent half-metre focaccia misto offering 29 vegetable, cheese and meat selections, allowing anyone to forget boring times. Keep a ledger and work your way through the pizzas. Start with the boscaiola, with layers of luscious fior di latte, cream, ham, mushrooms, parsley and parmesan on a perfect dough – easily foldable with chewy crusts you do not leave on the plate.

Move to the bianca prawn, a zingy lipsmacking mingle of king prawns, garlic oil, broccolini, cherry tomato, fior di latte and chilli oil. Loosen your waistband.

Peruse the seven bruschetta varieties (order the creamy burratella with folds of fat mortadella) then the golden deep-fried dough of pizza frittas, taking care to pick the porchetta with provolone cheese. Then choose the double layer amore tossico, which means what it says, with two layers of dough and ingredients including fior di latte, parmesan, provolone, home-made Italian sausage, tomato, ham, caramelised onions, buffalo cheese, basil and fried speck.

Have a lie-down or return the next day for the six homemade pastas, including gnocchi a tecamino. Rich, fragrant with herbs and cooked in the wood-fired oven, it is excellently fresh.

Then, for dessert, lick a pungent house-made black cherry gelato, inhale a zeppole di natalizia, a traditional doughnut dessert made in Napoli during Christmas, or munch a heart-shaped Nutella and strawberry dessert pizza. If you can’t finish, there are 199 other diners nearby to share it with.

“I love what we do, I never tire of it,” Zullo says. “Because, you know what I do on my day off? I cook and cook and cook. Always pleasure.”