Pizza and beer is unquestionably a thing. Throughout Italy, pizza e birra go together like vespas and red paint, while cartons of lager and deep-crust pizza have catered many a 20-something party. The two come together once again at Pretty Good Pizza, the pizza spin-off of Northbridge beer stronghold, Ruin Bar.

Like Ruin Bar, Pretty Good Pizza resides inside a heritage-listed space on Beaufort Street, albeit one with fewer square metres than the main bar. And whereas the mothership embraces the time-weathered pub look, this tiny shop is mostly shiny steel with the open kitchen occupying most of the room. Two countertops in the window allow guests to enjoy their pizza here, perhaps with a beer from the vending machine stocked with everything from colourful cans from New Zealand’s Garage Project to tinnies of Bush Chook. Otherwise, you’re welcome to enjoy your pizza in the pub – where more beers, some handy wines and cocktails await – or take it away. However you choose to get your daily RDI of pizza, count on crisp, (pretty) good pizza somewhere between two popular regional styles.

“There are so many pizza restaurants and shops doing the same [Neapolitan] style,” says Marcello Segalina, head chef of sister venue Jetty Bar & Eats and the force behind the food at Pretty Good Pizza. During the early stages of his cooking career in Modena in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, Segalina worked in a bakery for a year and has been soaking up baking know-how ever since. “I was really excited when he [owner Miles Hull] told me he was looking for something that could be held as a slice. I ended up taking the contemporary Neapolitan style of making dough and then tweaked the recipe of a classic Roman pizza, which is usually thinner, to create a dough that was nice and crunchy.”

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Structural integrity aside – each slice sits up nicely in the hand with minimal sag – flavour and lightness are the pizza’s other redeeming features. The dough features a blend of Italian Caputo 00 and wholemeal flours, while a yeast ferment of between 24 and 48 hours yields a pizza that’s easy to digest and light on the stomach. Pizza names echo the playlist’s fondness for predominantly ’80s and ’90s hip-hop: Italian sausage and pancetta come together in the A Tribe Called Quest-inspired Can I Kick It? while the 2Pac and Dre party-starter California Love is Pretty Good Pizza talk for ham-and-pineapple satisfaction. Pizzas are available as whole, LP-sized pies to share as well as by the slice for those eating and running. Sauces are also available for crust-dipping purposes too.

Ask Segalina about one of his favourite pies and he’ll tell you it’s the menu’s sole vegan offering, the NWA-themed Express Yourself, a cheese-less pie that starts with a pureed roast pumpkin base topped with sauteed capsicum, toasted pine nuts and a rosemary gremolata sauce. Venue manager Matt Shiel suggests that ordering the vegan offering and hacking it with a prosciutto add-on would not be a mistake.

Pretty Good Pizza
153 Beaufort Street, Perth

Hours:
Wed & Thu 4pm–11pm
Fri to Sun 12pm–11pm

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