First Look: Frankly Nick’s Two Owners Have Been Making Pizza Since They Were 17

Walking down Hurlstone Park’s high street feels a bit like stepping back in time. Faded storefronts that look like they haven’t been touched since the ’80s dot the neighbourhood, which has the feel of a small country town – everyone knows one another and community is paramount. This is why best mates William Kay and Georgio Panousos decided it was the perfect place to pay homage to their respective fathers Frank and Nick.

Hurlstone Park is smack-bang in between Belmore and Stanmore, where Frank and Nick grew up. The duo ran multiple venues together, like long-closed Broadway pizzeria Inferno Cafe, where Kay and Panousos caught the hospo bug.

“Our first jobs working in hospo were working as dishies for our dads at the pizza shops. We were stretching pizza when we were 17,” Kay tells Broadsheet. So, nostalgic for their childhoods spent in pizzerias, they opened Frankly Nick’s.

According to a local, the pizzeria is the first venue running dinner service in the area in decades, and the dough is a standout. The 48-hour cold-ferment is dusted with coarse semolina, delivering a crisp yet pliable base with a nice chew – just as the friends’ dads taught them.

Kay oversees the menu, which follows the “rule of four” – no more than four toppings, and each representing sweet, salty, sour or savoury.

Take the Napoletana base sauce. Cooked for five hours, it’s mildly sweet and used on all the red pizzas. It’s ideal for the aptly named Sacrilege, a jazzy take on a Hawaiian pizza with Fireball-infused charred pineapple, and counters the pepperoni pie’s heat and savouriness.

“The taste is built on the nostalgia vibe,” Panousos says. “Even the mozzarella that we’re using now is basically the same. We made ourselves a margherita the first day that the oven was on, and it took me back to when I was eight.”

The Caboolture mozzarella and cheese-curd mix stretches superbly within the cheesy garlic roll, too. This calzone riff has a cheese pull so long and melty, you really should see for yourself.

A pair of oven-baked pastas – a saucy vodka conchiglie and a fennel sausage number – serve as spins on late-night pastitsios found in Greece and come sizzling hot. Then there are family-recipe salads, like the Caesar Sister, where the chopped kale’s little nooks and crannies cradle the dressing – crucially, without being overly saucy – and toasted bread crumbs bring the crunch.

Nearly everything’s made in-house – from the hot honey and chilli oil to the biscuits used in the generations-old tiramisu recipe, which is finished with Nutella.

Cold cuts are sourced from LP’s Quality Meats and fruit and veg are picked fresh from the local Friendly Grocer. It took four weeks for a local butcher to perfect the blend of the Italian sausage mince used in the pizza and pasta. With a Liquor Emporium right next door, the pizzeria is also enthusiastically BYO.

“I’m trying to support everyone around us and build the little community vibe up,” Panousos says.

In its first week of trade, Frankly Nick’s sold 900 pizzas – so it’s safe to the relationship goes both ways.

Frankly Nick’s
36 Floss Street, Hurlstone Park
(02) 9326 4436

Hours:
Tue to Sat 5pm–9.30pm
Sun 5pm–9pm

franklynicks.com.au
@franklynicks