First Look: Ooh-Fa Is Serving Sourdough Pizzas, Thoughtful Small Plates and Organic Wine on Auckland’s Dominion Road

Auckland is a sprawling city. Over the past couple of years, a new guard of excellent neighbourhood restaurants has been meeting the growing demand for great food and drink options outside the CBD – and it’s now joined by another promising new opening.

From the team behind Pici, Ooh-Fa officially opens for its first service this evening. The 22-seater on Dominion Road draws on the crew’s knack for creating a community. “It’s a simple offering, but it really comes back to creating a warm, welcoming and fun space”, says Pici co-founder Gemma Hareb.

She’s heading up the new operation along with her Pici partners, Jono Thevenard and Kazuya Suzuki, and newly minted team member Fraser Childs, whose vision and decade of experience are driving the concept. Deep fans of The Sopranos may have already guessed, but pizza is the linchpin of Auckland’s Ooh-Fa – along with a mostly organic wine list and simple small plates.

“[We’re] taking it back to the foundations,” says Childs, “exploring traditional techniques with pickling vegetables, curing meat and fermenting dough, and having that relate to the wine we are serving also being a crafted product.”

The long space feels snug despite raw textures such as the concrete walls and floor and upcycled wooden tables. There’s a curved, porcelain-tiled bar and a large silver woodfire pizza oven at the back. Front-of-house manager Shajal Singh looks after the floor, and bar manager James Pain is always keen to discuss wine at the bar.

Pici is loved for its no-nonsense, high-calibre food (and cult cacio e pepe), and Ooh-Fa’s team pledges the same handmade quality – but for slices instead of pasta.

The fermentation process is crucial to the flavour and texture of Ooh-Fa's pizza bases. “We are using a two-year-old sourdough starter that we feed every day with a mix of stone-ground flours from Canterbury,” says Childs. “The dough is fermented for 72 hours and left to proof for six before going into the oven to cook in just over 60 seconds.”

Toppings are “seasonal and Italian leaning” but not strictly traditional. The goal is to “push boundaries respectfully”. You'll see a crowd-pleasing marinara with an optional stracciatella add-on, and a topping of ‘nduja with ricotta, mozzarella and garlic honey. A kūmara (sweet potato), spring onion, garlic, mozzarella and black pepper pizza is an ode to local ingredients and exploration in the kitchen.

The focus on fermentation doesn’t stop with sourdough. A selection of sides includes pickled cauliflower, carrots, beets, and onion with warm bagna cauda – a buttery anchovy dip. The smoky flavour of woodfired carrots is coddled with whipped ricotta and pistachios.

The wine list is vibrant and unconventional, curated with care by Pain – who’s come from Pici to manage Ooh-Fa’s bar. He sources drops from small Aotearoa producers such as Amoise and Halcyon Days from Hawke’s Bay, and North Canterbury label Vita – think chilled reds, pét-nats, orange wines, and alternative grape varietals and blends.

“I enjoy how these styles disrupt our expectations of what makes a wine good and encourage us to take each wine as it comes,” he says. Many of the wines can be traced back to sustainable farming practices, and most of the wine on the list is organic.

Keep an eye out for residencies by local DJs, and soon-to-come meet-the-maker wine events. “Auckland hospitality is changing rapidly and it’s fun to be part of this change,” says Hareb. “[We’re] really excited to share this with more of the locals and to be a part of this new community.”

Ooh-Fa
357 Dominion Road, Mount Eden, Auckland

Hours:
Wed to Sun 5pm–10pm

oohfa.co.nz
@oohfa__

This article was published on August 10 2022. Some menu items may have changed since publication.