Super awesome piping hot wood fired pizzas on a cold winters day?
I'm all for it!
La Disfida is a cozy little Italian pizza joint in Haberfield, didn't allow us to make reservations so hence, we got there at 6pm to guarantee ourselves a seat. A good selection of entree, pizza menu and blackboard selection, we had a hard time trying to refrain from ordering everything on the menu.
After a long deliberation, we decided on 3 entree dishes: the calamari e zucchini fritti ($17), deep fried polenta with a blue cheese dipping sauce (from specials menu), and the porcini fettuccine (also from specials menu).
The zucchini and calamari came out in decent proportion. Smelt amazing! Tasted good too (until it cooled down) but I found the batter a little too floury and not crunchy enough. But that's probably what they were aiming for. Good thing was, it didn't feel too oily :)
lamari e zucchini fritti - $17
I'm not a polenta fan, but my friends were - and they absolutely loved this dish. Deep fried perfectly cut rectangular prisms of golden brownly crumbed soft mushy polenta in a hecticly strong and flavoursome blue cheese mixture. If I were a polenta and blue cheese fan, I can imagine that this would be perfect - but sadly, I'm not.
deep fried polenta with blue cheese
The creamy fettucini with porcini mushrooms and rocket, however, was absolutely perfectly up my alley. It came out smelling delicious - getting all those stomach acids going - then lived up to its promise by providing al dente pasta with aromatic porcini and tasty rocket leaves. YUM. If I wasn't dining with friends, I would have absolutely hogged this dish and claimed it as
mine.
Porcini fettuccine
So this restaurant is famous for it's wood-fired pizzas. They have a huge brick wood-fired pizza oven on the bottom level and hard working pizza makers spinning dough, topping the dough and ovening the round disk of goodness. We ordered 2 pizzas - the quattro stagione ($22), and the barletta ($22).
The
quattro stagione (or, 'four seasons), was a thin crispy chewy tomato pizza base topped with artichokes, olives, ham and mushrooms. The mozarella was a little bit scarce and the pieces were cut a little be large anf uneveny, but it was definately very very tasty. My favourite bit of the pie was probably the artichokes which were soft and juicy and deliciousness~
quattro stagione - $22
The
barletta was again, a tomato-based thinly crusted pizza, this time, topped with prosciutto crudo and basil, pepper to taste and olive oil drizzled over. Again, I would have preferred a little more mozerella, but it was very yummy anyway.
Barletta - $22
After those epic savoury dishes, we were all up for a sweet change. I ordered the tiramisu ($10). This was really light, richly coffee-flavoured, with a uber awesomely dusted chocolate coating. Seemed authentically italian to me! (but what would I know?)
tiramisu - $10
My friends ordered from the desserts special menu ($11 each). There was a cannoli with ricotta stuffing and a sticky date nutty biscuit thing. They seemed to think that this was alright. The cannoli was very crispy and the ricotta was really creamy but I'm not a fan of sticky date fig thing.
dessert special - $11
pannacotta - $11
The other dessert was a pannacotta. Very smooth, silky looking wobbling thing that my friends seemed to enjoy muchly.
All up, the food here was pretty awesome. Service is good and friendly enough, although at times, they speak a little too quickly. Ambiance is cozy and chillaxy - just the way you'd want it for a catch up with friends.
gs:
Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 29/40
La Disfida
109 Ramsay Rd
La Disfida
Haberfield
NSW, 2045
Tel: (02) 9798 9299
big breaky roll - $9.50
chocolate milkshake
mushroom special - $14
