Auckland came closest of any city in this cohort to a local answer, and it broke under checking. A 2015 piece has two Auckland pizzerias burning manuka, which would be exactly the thing worth finding - a native wood worked into an Italian form. One of those businesses has since changed owners, name and address and no longer names the fuel; the other has lost its own domain. Neither was published on eleven-year-old evidence. The honest state is that Auckland may have had a local answer and this guide cannot currently show it, which is a better sentence than a manuka claim nobody can stand behind.
The pizza at Dante's is documented rather than merely reputed: sourdough made with flour imported from Italy, fermented at least two days, baked in wood-fired ovens imported from Naples. It was the first pizzeria in New Zealand certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, and head pizzaiolo Enis Baçova placed second in the Neapolitan category at the 2024 Caputo Cup in Naples.
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Settebello has run a Neapolitan pizza counter in New Lynn since 2012, with a wood-fired oven imported from Italy and dough proofed more than 24 hours on the business's own account. Head pizzaiolo Alberto is a member of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Chefs and took second place at New Zealand's first Caputo Cup pizza competition in 2025.
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Owner Rocco Pezzullo has made pizza since he was 18, and this is his second Auckland pizzeria — which is why Auckland is no longer a single-address story in this guide. The pizzeria's own account of its pizza is 'a contemporary Napolitan pizza fired up in just 90 seconds,' alongside a traditional 'a rota e carretta' style.
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Chef Ivan Janic renovated a former Grey Lynn dairy and imported a custom pizza oven from Naples to make Roman-style pizza — 15-inch sourdough bases, thinner and wider than a Neapolitan pie, topped with a housemade tomato base he spent two years perfecting. It is a single-maker, single-site operation rather than a chain outpost, and still appears in current (2026) Auckland pizza coverage.
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Sergio Maglione, a pizza chef from Naples, opened Farina in 2014 after co-owning Toto Restaurant; in 2016 it became one of only three AVPN-certified pizzerias in New Zealand. The restaurant's own terrace still carries steel-and-glass tables left over from when it served Toto's pizza by the metre, before switching to the current Neapolitan format at the end of 2015.
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Dante's pizzaiolo Enis Baçova opened a second, distinct programme in June 2026: a Roman forno rather than a Neapolitan pizzeria, selling teglia romana (tray pizza) by weight from a display counter, alongside pala romana pizza sandwiches and Roman fried food. It is named for the Baçova family's grandmother and run with his sister Riljeta, making it a family successor concept rather than a Dante's satellite.
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