La Disfida in Haberfield is still one of Sydney’s best pizza restaurants

“Currently at La Disfida,” a friend messaged the other week. “It’s easily in the pantheon of great Sydney pizzerias.” A mighty call, yes, but it was coming from a mate who grew up in New York City, which everyone knows is where pizza was invented. It was all I needed to hear to make a lunch booking at La Disfida because it had been years since my last visit to the Haberfield icon, too.

When Ruggiero Lattanzio opened the Ramsay Street restaurant in the 1990s, Sydney’s pizza landscape was still in the Super Supreme age. You might encounter a slice of some salmon and pea tendril-topped nonsense in a chichi Surry Hills tratt, but it was an era largely dominated by Pepsi refills, stuffed crusts, deep-pans and Dial-a-Dino’s. Leichhardt had its reliable, red-sauce haunts, but the Italo-Oz community didn’t get excited for pizza “like home” until Napoli in Bocca and La Disfida launched in Haberfield at roughly the same time.

Local families were either Team Bocca or Club Disfida. It was Ford versus Holden, Milo versus Nesquik. Peter Zuzza took over La Disfida in 2009 (he’d been running his family’s long-standing Mixing Pot restaurant in Glebe), maintained Lattanzio’s pizza recipes, and sold the business to Debbie Colacicco two years ago.

I’ve been to La Disfida three times in the past four weeks, such is the pulling power of its warm-lit dining room.

The two-storey restaurant remains packed every weekend, and manager Simone Busi runs a tight and friendly ship on the floor. The Napoli in Bocca site is now a confused-looking “Asian fusion” joint, so I guess we finally have a winner.

I’ve been to La Disfida three times in the past four weeks, such is the pulling power of its warm-lit dining room and cooking in winter. I want to be surrounded by Campari posters and the painting of Disfida di Barletta, the namesake medieval barney between French and Italian knights. I want to watch furrowed-browed pizzaiolos work the wood-burning oven. I want to take the leftovers home for tomorrow night’s dinner, eaten on the couch with a John le Carre movie adaptation and lugs of sangiovese.

The penne al forno ($35) is a pasta seemingly designed for watching Cold War spies from beneath a woolly blanket: rich pork sausage ragu baked with molten mozzarella, ricotta and parmesan, plus a topcoat of golden breadcrumbs.

Bitey pappardelle is tangled with a braised, wild-boar ragu ($37) of commanding depth. Salt-and-pepper spatchcock ($35) comes with sharp peperonata and a batter not too dissimilar to southern fried chicken. (Look, I really don’t want to say “big KFC vibes”, but there’s really no other way to put it.)

Each of those dishes were ordered from the specials menu, which lists about a dozen new or returning items each week. It’s not all end-of-days, hibernation gear either, and you could well find yellowfin tuna tartare with avocado and horseradish ($31) next to the four-cheese arancini ($23). One of the salad specials is always a smart order, such as a nicely acidic pear, cabbage and goat’s cheese number ($22) which popped up in late June.

Anyway, the pizza. Does it live up to the hype? Indeed. Absolutely. The base is thin, chewy and slightly salty – pliable, but still dutifully strong: toppings don’t slide off. The sauce is bright. No one at Disfida will bang on about the (frankly boring) world of dough hydration rates and flour types. Staff only want you to know that the kitchen uses San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte buffalo mozzarella. The good stuff.

A margherita finished with fresh basil costs $23 and is devoid of those little pools of grease that plague lesser pizzas. The Diavola ($27) is paved with a salami of serious heat, olives and the occasional anchovy.

Lattanzio created the Disfida ($28) for his restaurant’s opening menu, and it’s barely changed since – a briny, triple-punch of olives, capers and anchovies tempered by ham and smoked mozzarella. Terrific with a glass of Andrea Occhipinti’s fresh and dry 2020 Alter Alea Bianco ($17) made with aleatico grapes grown just north of Rome.

If I have to name a favourite pizza, it’s the salsiccia e funghi ($28), starring tanned, juicy pebbles of pork sausage, wild mushroom and more olives. Close second is a recent special neatly layered with salami, threads of bitter-green friarielli and tiny islands of whipped ricotta ($29).

Like any good pizza, it’s best eaten at the source, but everything is available to take away, and my wife is picking up the salsiccia e funghi and a panettone bread-and-butter pudding ($14) as I finish these lines. My only tasks are to find some chianti, and cue up Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine