Setting your pizza and pasta apart from the competition
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the nott executive chef andy tsai
There’s no denying the popularity of pizza and pasta on the Australian foodservice menu. A staple across cafes, pubs, clubs and casual to fine dining, these Italian-derived dishes are favourites not just with customers but also with chefs and foodservice professionals, thanks to their ease of preparation and relatively high profit margin. And in recent years, we’ve seen solid growth in artisan style pizza and pasta – with fresh ingredients and creative recipes to the fore.
Andy Tsai is executive chef at ‘The Nott’, as Melbourne’s iconic Notting Hill Hotel is familiarly known. Boasting one of the city’s biggest beer gardens, with shady trees and seating for 850, The Nott is famous for its laid back atmosphere and extensive menu – with pizza and pasta among its big sellers.
PIZZA SPREAD AT THE NOTT
Artisan approach pays off
“It’s a fantastic space here,” Andy acknowledges. “We’ve got five different menus – a front bar, steakhouse, pizza kitchen, bistro and a massive function space as well. And since the holiday season started, we are getting slammed!
“We put in our pizza kitchen about nine years ago and today we sell more than 1000 pizzas a week. We make our own bases in house, hand rolling and stretching the dough and fermenting for 24 hours.”
Andy believes this artisan approach to pizzamaking is what sets their pizzas apart from the competition. “I think when it’s handmade you can taste the passion behind it,” he says. “We use only premium ingredients and I think when you offer good quality, people will keep coming back for it.”
Andy and his team take a ‘less is more’ approach to their pizza builds: “We try not to go overboard on the toppings – you need to balance out the pizza so that the base will hold – and we also want our customers to really taste the cheese.
“It’s important to start off with a good cheese because that’s the base that holds the other ingredients in place. We use a mix of Mozzarella and Tasty cheese – I find adding a little bit of Tasty in there enhances the flavour, imparting an extra sharpness.”
There are currently 16 pizzas on the Nott’s menu – from traditional favourites like Margherita and Pepperoni to more exotic creations like Peking duck with confit garlic, caramelised onion and hoisin mayonnaise topped with spring onion. And for a special spin on the Meat Lovers pizza, Andy created a spicy pork, pancetta, bacon and chorizo pizza with tomato, chilli and olives.
“They all sell very well,” he reports. “Obviously your Pepperoni, Spicy Pork, Shaved ham and slow roasted pineapple are always in demand because they are our take on the classics. In warmer weather, the Garlic prawn with cherry tomatoes, peas, chilli and rocket is a big hit as well.”
Seafood linguine is biggest seller
Pasta is also a key component of the menu, with The Nott’s Seafood linguine a popular favourite. “We’ve had that on the menu since 2015, so long before I got here, but I’ve done some little tweaks and modifications to the recipe,” Andy says. “We tried to take it off the menu once but we got screamed at by the regulars so we had to put it back on! It’s definitely our biggest seller – we do more than 500 of them a week.”
Andy’s team used to make their own pasta in house – “but we’ve found a terrific fresh pasta producer locally, Farinacci Pasta in Oakleigh, who supply us with the more than 300 kilos per week that we go through.”
Andy recommends using fresh egg yolk pasta wherever possible – “You can taste the freshness, there’s a big difference between fresh and dried pasta. Sometimes when people try fresh for the first time, they’ll say ‘this is not the linguine taste we’re used to’ but they always prefer it. And egg yolk pasta has a slightly different texture, a little more chewiness and bite to it – it’s not doughy, it’s quite different from your standard dried pasta, which can break and turn into mush especially when it’s overcooked.”
Also on the menu is Spaghetti aglio olio, with garlic, chilli, olive oil, chopped parsley and pangrattato, emulsified in a little pasta water. “You can’t make a dish like that unless you’re using good quality pasta,” Andy points out.
He prides himself on taking an authentic Italian approach to these dishes. “My partner is Italian and I’ve been taught by her nonna, which is invaluable. It’s interesting to learn how a lot of the way we tend to approach pasta in Australia is not the way the Italians do it. For example, refreshing pasta using iced water is a big no-no in Italian culture – so we don’t do that, we put it on a big tray, drizzle it with olive oil and leave it until it reaches room temperature, then we pack it down.”
Andy also runs pasta-inclusive dishes as specials – “at the moment we have a smoked sausage ragout with napoli sauce, cream and heaps of garlic, with gnocchi, caramelised onion and fresh parsley. We have one of the biggest smokers in the eastern suburbs and we smoke up to 400 kilos of meat at a time.”
Ensure everything is in balance
Consultant chef peter wright
Consultant chef and seasoned pizza competition judge Peter Wright says much of the appeal of pizza and pasta is down to the typical use of Mediterranean style ingredients which contain plenty of umami.
“Umami is the flavour we all love,” Peter explains. “You can get it by caramelising cheese or roasting tomatoes, so pizza – which contains both these flavours – is built on a strong foundation of umami. The aim then is to create a distinctive flavour profile which your customers crave – they eat one pizza and want another! This is also the case with a lot of pasta-based dishes.”
“Today minimalistic ingredients are the way to go”
Peter says umami is part of our sensory makeup and this is precisely why pizza has become such a popular menu item. He also emphasises that when it creating a good balance of pizza toppings, the golden rule is “less is more”.
“In the old days pizza was all about value – giving customers the maximum amount of topping, but today minimalistic ingredients are the way to go.”
The aim is to maintain the integrity of your ingredients while generating plenty of umami, and the way to do that, he says, is to choose the right type of quality ingredients in the right combination.
“Choosing quality ingredients means you don’t have to use a truckload to get the flavour you want,” he explains. “For example, a quality cheese requires only minimal product to achieve maximum flavour. You need to bear this in mind when working out how much you need of each ingredient. As always, the aim is to ensure everything is in balance.”
“A quality cheese requires only minimal product to achieve maximum flavour”
Pasta delivers a strong profit margin
Peter recommends having several pasta dishes on the menu because “they’re among the easiest meals to make and they’ll deliver a strong profit margin. Your pasta recipe can be as simple as three ingredients or as complex as a chicken pesto with 10 or 12 components. If you have leftover ingredients you need to use up, it’s simple to make a pasta dish and put it on the specials board – it’s a great way for the chef to indulge their creativity, and everyone loves it!”
Peter describes pasta as “the conduit of the dish”, adding “There are as many different types of pasta as there are breads. Which one you use depends a lot on your customer demographic – some manufactured pastas are made to be pre-blanched for quicker services, and there is a big range to choose from, all the way to from your standard processed pasta to handmade pasta with 00 flour and free range eggs that’s soft and delicate.”
He adds that in Australia we have made some adaptations to the traditional Italian recipes. “Carbonara sauce, for example, traditionally isn’t made with cream but in Australia we tend to splash a bit in it, so you get that nice salty cured meat, cheesy paramesan flavour and then the delicate tempering of the cream. That’s so much umami in dishes like that – it’s the same reason we use slow-roasted tomatoes to make Bolognese sauce.”
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