To celebrate Bright Eyes’ and my birthday, Mao Mao suggested going to Peperoni Pizzeria for lunch. Of course there were other options but they were all pretty accessible while Peperoni Pizzeria is quite inconvenient for people who don’t have cars. Since the whole gang will be going for lunch, it meant that we have 2 cars available so might as well make use of them. Besides, it’s a double birthday, so it should be special. We went in 2 cars to Greenwood Avenue which is a quiet area with a row of restaurants serving delicious and sometimes expensive food.
Peperoni Pizzeria is a cheery restaurant with walls filled with pictures drawn by previous customers. Each table was covered with coloured paper which as served as tablecloths. There was a cup filled with crayons so that people could draw on the paper. I liked the casual atmosphere of the restaurant. As Mao Mao had been to the restaurant before, we let her do the ordering. It was a good meal and I enjoyed myself.
Being our birthday treat, Bright Eyes and I were forbidden to see the bill. It didn’t stopped us from trying though. As the waitress was standing next to us, we would try to crane our necks to get a peep. Until the waitress realised what we were trying to do and quickly held the bill away from our reach. Later on I found out that Peperoni Pizzeria posted the menu online, completed with prices. Bless the internet.
Peperoni Pizzeria
6 Greenwood Avenue
Hillcrest Park
Tel: 64656556
More on the food after the jump
Calamari fritti ($13)
The calamari came with two dipping sauces; a somewhat spicy chopped tomato sauce and mayo. Being lousy at spicy food, I ate the mayo sauce most of the time. I liked the deep-fried calamari and when everyone was distracted after the arrival of the pizzas and pastas, I quietly finished them.
All the pizzas we ordered have crispy thin crust and were priced according to the size:
Medium 9 inch $18
Large 12 inch $22
XXL 21 inch $45
Funghi (mushroom) pizza
There were 3 different types of mushrooms in the pizza; button mushroom, shitake mushroom and porcini mushroom. There was a generous amount of mushrooms and they were cut into little bits, instead of being thinly sliced.
Suprema pizza
The suprema pizza contained shitake mushroom, chicken, sausage, onions and red chilli. The chilli was kept to a minimum and wasn’t very spicy. Even I could eat it.
4 formaggi (cheese) pizza
The pizza contained 4 types of cheese; mozzallera, taleggio, scarmorza and gorgonzola. Of course after it was all mixed and melted down, it just tasted cheesy to me. The pizza was flavourful and a little salty.
For pasta dishes, we could choose between spaghetti, fettuccini, linguine, penne, fussilli and angel hair. From what we ate, I can tell you that the pasta were very good. It was the best pasta I have ever tasted; not too soft, not too hard but cooked just right and a little springy. But despite the great pasta, the dishes did not impress. I think it is because the pasta is so good that the other ingredients could not match up to it, resulting in a dish where one ingredient outshone all the others. But of course, we only ate 3 pasta dishes so maybe other combinations would be better?
Funghi and pollo ($20)
First I would like to say that I do not like the fettuccini with button mushroom and chicken in brown sauce. It is not because the dish is yucky. The pasta was cooked very well, the chunks of chicken meat were tender and the button mushrooms were nice. Yet even though each ingredient by itself was really quite well done, putting them all together into the dish resulted in something that tasted “meh” to me. Someone commented that it felt like soy sauce chicken meepok.
Aglio olio and peperoncino ($17)
The aglio olio linguine was much better because the pasta is the only main star of the dish and all the other ingredients were seasonings. One could really enjoy the pasta without distractions from other ingredients.
Squid ink ($21)
The squid ink pasta was flavourful and I quite like it. It came with 3-4 mussels but since it is not my favourite shellfish, I did not eat any and only ate the pasta. The pasta was coated in the squid ink sauce and all of us had black teeth and tongues after eating it. We joked that it wasn’t a dish that one should eat for the first date.
After finishing 3 pizzas and 3 pasta dishes, we reached the stage where we were full but still able to eat more. Being greedy people, we ordered another 2 more pizzas.
Margherita pizza
We had one of the classics, margherita. This was the first time I ate a margherita pizza and it felt a little like the 4 cheese pizza except that it wasn’t as cheesy.
Truffle pizza
We also ordered a pizza containing truffles, capsicum and egg. The egg was still soft and we had to be careful not to let the yolk drip on us when we ate it. It is a colourful pizza, quite cheery to look at. We could all smell and taste the truffles on the pizza. Mao Mao liked this pizza a lot.
After writing everything down, I just realized that there wasn’t a lot of meat in this meal. Well, have to see who did the ordering.
