Blue Vein Cafe – Newtown

The good old pizza. Who would have thought it would be a struggle to find a decent one made the way they were intended. Thin, soft, chewy crust with crispy edges, limited number of toppings. Australia has well and truly gone the way of a certain other western nation and completely bastardized such a simple food. Stuffed crust, pan, themed toppings, it goes on and on.
Blue Vein Cafe has been operating for quite a while now and was recently taken over and given a slight face lift. It also seems to have a new name: Cat & Bird Cafe, though it isn’t in print yet. The new high-back dark leather chairs give it a more sophisticated dining room feel and those scary metal abstract statues of cats and birds are a bit much.

When it comes to the menu it is mainly woodfired pizza options subdivided into themed gourmet chicken, meat, vegetarian, seafood and traditional. Within these categories are pizza’s with names such as Mumbai, Carribean, Aztec, Bali, Canadian, Thailand, Malay and many more. This is usually enough information to turn me off but we just wanted to give our local pizza joint a go. There is also a selection of pastas and salads.

To start I thought I’d try the pizza bread and was surprised at what came out. The texture of the bread is something like Indian chapati bread, sprinkled with garlic and parmesan and cooked in a woodfired oven.

What can I say, on paper the toppings sounded pretty good but what came out was unroasted raw capsicum with accompanying ingredients, lots of unexpected mozzarella cheese on top of a chapati base.

This pizza also sounded good on the menu but what came out was an absolute abomination. Tomato salsa, basil and pinenuts were absent and the thickest layer of greasy mozzarella drowned the entire thing. Oh, and all of this sitting on an oil-soaked chapati base.

Service is very good here but unfortunately it doesn’t make up for not-so-good pizza. One word for the suggestion box: learn how to make pizza dough.

Tagged as: Inner West, Newtown, Pizza