Lievito, Victoria Park’s New Pizza Joint, Is Built Different

My culinary hot take? A folded slice of pizza is but a sandwich. 

Once you’ve bent it in half, you’ve fundamentally changed the architecture of the meal. What was once an open-faced slice is now two layers of dough with filling in between. It is my – somewhat controversial – opinion that pizza should not require this level of intervention. 

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. If it’s 1am in New York City and I’m eating a $2 slice standing up, hovering over the counter, oil dripping down my fingers and onto a flimsy paper plate, I’m folding that thing in half without hesitation. That’s different. That’s tradition.

But generally speaking, I want my pizza to have structural integrity. I want to pick up a slice and trust it, without worrying about the tip succumbing to gravity, the toppings sliding south and the whole thing collapsing under the weight of its own ambition. 

Thankfully, at Lievito I can set all my worries aside. Named after the Italian word for yeast, the new Victoria Park pizzeria makes enormous 20-inch pizzas that play in the space between Roman and New York styles: thin, crisp and chewy, but sturdy enough to remain horizontal when you pick them up. 

Lake Como-born owner Eddy Alikaj is the brains behind the operation. Six years ago he opened Pizzeria Da Leo six years ago with his brother before expanding to three locations. Lievito was born from Alikaj’s desire to try to create something he hadn’t seen in Perth, after trips to New York and Milan.

“No one in Perth has this pizza style with this quality,” says Alikaj. 

The quality is apparent from the pantry, with Campania tomatoes, San Daniele prosciutto and Grana Padano, all imported from Italy. That same Italian influence runs through the menu, which is kept deliberately tight with just nine 20-inch pizzas. There’s the vegetarian Patata pizza with paper-thin slices of potato and fresh rosemary; the Hot Honey pie with spicy salami, jalapenos, generous quenelles of Lulu La Delizia stracciatella; and the Absolute, which transforms the vodka-pasta obsession into a pizza with Italian sausage. 

Each is available whole or by the slice, but “slice” is something of a misnomer. A single serve makes up a quarter of the 20-inch pizza that’s then cut into two. At $14, it’s substantial enough to pass as lunch. 

The size dictates how the pies are cooked. While his other pizzas take about a minute in the oven, Lievito’s 20-inch pies are cooked for five to six minutes at around 350 degrees, giving the base time to develop a crunch. 

There are only a handful of seats out the front, so takeaway is the main game: mainly slices at lunchtime, and whole pizzas in the evening. Alikaj has plans to expand somewhere closer to the coast, but that can wait until 2027. 

For now, there’s a quarter of a 20-inch pizza in front of me, and half of it sits neatly in my hand. No folding required. 

Lievito 

413 Albany Highway, Victoria Park

0401 029 462

Hours:

Tue to Sat 11.30am–1.30pm, 5pm–9pm

Sun 5–9pm

@lievitopizza_

www.lievitopizza.com.au