Eating out (or in): Crust pizza

It was said by a friend many years ago that I must have a wholly separate stomach reserved for the processing of pizza. Before my metabolism slowed down to a mere sprint, I could easily pack away close to two whole pies, as those whacky Americans call them. I still loves me some pizza, but these days I usually stick to a more reserved rate of consumption.

You know - just one.

There's a lot of quite good inner city pizza joints, but they tend to change in their consistency as staff come and go. Pizza Picasso in Newtown used to be our number one, with their Korfu - a truly wondrous concoction of freshly sliced tomato, fetta, sliced garlic, roast red capsicum and kalamata olives - being a regular guest in our house. Sadly, these days the Korfu tends to be over-oiled and lacking in freshness.

Albert's, also in Newtown, can always be relied upon for an oily mess of a pizza that is nonetheless satisfying and very tasty (and if you like things spicy, try their Acapulco - a true two burn pizza), but one cannot always handle that much oil. Torino's on Enmore Rd is another good choice, but they do tend to over-cheese their pizzas. That said, there are few things more satisfying than staggering into Torino's after a few well considered drinks and chowing into their Margarita. Bliss.

However, for regular pizza action, we've got a new favourite.

Crust

For what's effectively a chain pizza outlet, Crust really knows their stuff. Not too much cheese, not too oily, really interesting ingredient combos, and - unsurprising, given their name - a great crust.

This is Crust's Supreme, and it's awesome. Lots of tasty meats, juicy kalamata olives, and the perfect dusting of cheese. I'm not a pineapple fan as a rule, but once again, Crust gets the ratio just right and I can suddenly understand why people like it on pizza.

And this is Crust's Wild Mushroom pizza (wine glass purely for scale... ), which we had for the first time last night - wow. There's three or four different mushroom varieties, including Shiitake, with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, and the asparagus. Asparagus + Parmesan = awesome. However, poorly prepped asparagus = woody and not at all pleasant.

It looks like they take each spear, chop it in two, and throw it on the pizza - this means every other slice is tender and noms, while the other other slice you can't even bite through properly. It's an easy mistake to make with asparagus, too, but it's just as easy to dodge. All you need to do is take your fresh spear, and bend it until it snaps in two - you'll end up with naturally woody portion snapped off, and it'll snap in a slightly different spot for each spear.

Otherwise, this was stupidly tasty pizza topping.

The only other issue is the closest Crust to us is in Dulwich Hill, and that's just far enough for the pizza to arrive not quite hot enough every now and then. Or maybe it's because they get lost in the maze-like innards of our apartment block.

Who can say...