First Look: Rocc Up, a Former Coriole Chef’s One-Man Pizza Shop, Is Doing Things Differently

When it came to naming his one-man pizzeria, Glasgow-born ex-Coriole chef Jamie Bennie had two sources of inspiration.

The first was “that Australian slang to ‘rock up’,” he says. The second was the portable pizza oven, the Gozney Roccbox.

Rocc Up Pizza, which quietly opened on Gilbert Street in November, opted to use an electric pizza oven rather than a woodfired oven, taking inspiration from Bennie’s friend Enrico Sgarbossa of That’s Enrico, who Bennie says makes “without a doubt, the best [pizza] in South Australia”.

“I like the way that the electric oven takes out a lot of the moisture, leaving a crisp blistered crust,” Bennie says. For the one-man operation, the reliability of an electric oven, which “runs on elements”, means the quality stays consistent and is quicker to cook without “cutting corners”.

“I think wood fire, if you’re dining in and getting it straight off the stone, is great, but we’re doing takeaway. It’s taking 25 minutes, maybe, until people are getting home, so we want to make sure that the integrity and the structure are still very much there,” he says.

The former Coriole chef cut his teeth in gastropubs and fine diners, so opening a pizza shop might not seem like the obvious next step.

“It’s quite a strange one – obviously, I’ve always loved pizza, but I don’t think I respected it much.

“When you start breaking it down, there are so many variables. With the good pizza, it was the same sauce, the same cheese [and] I wanted to do something different.”

Using the knowledge and techniques from his fine-dining days, Bennie says Rocc Up Pizza has a heavy focus on “post-baked toppings” – that is, toppings that go on after the pizza emerges from the oven.

“I do the flavours of Hawaiian, but a little bit differently. I don’t just open up a tin of pineapple and put it on a pizza,” he says. “I make a fresh salsa that tops it off at the end so that you still get the flavour of pineapple, but it’s got acidity; it’s got salt; it’s got a bit of heat. It’s very much like a taco: you want to try and get everything on that one slice.”

Other examples of this include Bennie’s Shroomami with roasted oyster mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, caramelised onion, provolone and post-baked whipped and Bennie’s own “mushroom crisp”, which is made with dried porcini, fennel and shitake and has a chili crisp consistency; along with the favourite Satriales, which includes pork and fennel sausage, sopressa, pomodoro and mozzarella, topped with hot honey, parmigiano Reggiano and chives post-bake.

At the moment, Bennie is offering pizzas by the slice on the weekends, which you can eat perched on milk crates out front, or as full 18-inch pizzas to take home.

Rocc Up Pizza

55 Gilbert Street, Adelaide.

No phone

Hours:

Fri to Sun 5pm–9pm

@rocc_up_pizza

www.roccuppizza.com.au/