Sydney's record carries a warning about this guide's own machinery. Its stated boundary is Greater Sydney; the population on file was the City of Sydney LGA, a fraction of it, and the two contradicted each other until 2026-09-18. The boundary stands and the figure was withdrawn. The consequence for this set is that it is incomplete: the research that built it read the tight LGA and excluded most of the city, including Sydney's own entry in the world ranking, which sits in Newtown. What is here is real and what is missing is named.
DOC is a Melbourne pizza group (see the companion Carlton record) whose Surry Hills branch was its first outside Victoria. The base is wood-fired, mostly wholemeal with some white flour, minimally topped to let a four-day slow-rise crust show through, and the founder describes the dough as respecting fermentation with ancient and organic grains.
Verified 2026-09-18
This is the Sydney outpost of the Naples original founded in 1870, opened 5 December 2025 as the brand's first Australian location, with the oven and artisans brought from Naples. The dough is hand-kneaded and left to rise for at least 24 hours before being stretched and fired in the imported oven.
Verified 2026-09-18
Lucio De Falco holds AVPN membership number 408, granted in March 2012, and is documented winning the title of Australia's best pizza at that year's World Pizza Championships with a signature STG (specialita tradizionale garantita) pizza in the traditional Naples style, the only year he entered. No source reached gives fermentation or hydration detail.
Verified 2026-09-18
The Dolphin Hotel relaunched its pizza programme in 2023 around a new Neapolitan Mesiano wood-fired oven and a named head pizzaiolo, Sasa Smiljanic, previously of Bella Brutta. The dough is made with three wheat flours imported from Italy and pre-fermented to use less yeast.
Verified 2026-09-18
Paul Allam, co-founder of Bourke Street Bakery, opened this New York-slice shop using a 22-year-old sourdough starter as the base of a dough fermented for 24 hours at 62 per cent hydration, divided into balls and proved individually before being hand-stretched into 18-inch rounds and baked on an electric Moretti Forni deck.
Verified 2026-09-18
Appizza is a New Haven-style slice shop opened by Stefano De Caro with the AP Bakery team, serving 22-inch rounds by the slice only. The dough is house-milled each morning at AP's Marrickville bakery, then carted to the Darlinghurst site to be shaped, topped and pre-baked before finishing in a Swedish Pizza Master electric deck oven during service.
Verified 2026-09-18
Ben Fester and Drew Huston, who began popping up with square pan pizzas at Poor Toms gin hall in Marrickville, run this Detroit-style pan pizza bar under Central Station. The base is a sourdough given a longer fermentation than their round pizzas, par-cooked in American Lloyd pans and finished with a second, lower-temperature bake to caramelise the edges.
Verified 2026-09-18
Gigi Pizzeria is one of a small number of Sydney pizzerias accredited by the AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana). Founder and pizzaiolo Marco Matino converted the menu to fully plant-based toppings in 2015 while keeping the AVPN-accredited hand-stretched, wood-fired dough unchanged.
Verified 2026-09-18
Da Orazio has run a wood-fired, blistered Neapolitan-style pizza programme in Bondi since founder Orazio D'Elia opened it in January 2014, closed it in 2019 after selling in 2018, and reopened it himself in 2022. Pizzaiolo Ernandes is credited with perfecting the biga-style fermentation now used for the dough.
Verified 2026-09-18
Via Napoli has run wood-fired Neapolitan pizza from Lane Cove for over 15 years under third-generation Naples-born pizzaiolo Luigi Esposito, on an 8-hour-fermented dough with imported San Marzano tomatoes.
Verified 2026-09-18
Queen Margherita of Savoy was the fifth Sydney pizzeria to be AVPN-accredited (member #539, since 2015), on a wood-burning Stefano Ferrara oven imported from Naples. In 2023 owner-pizzaiolo Lee Carroll added a Roman-style, teglia-cut lunch service on a separate deck oven, switching the whole kitchen's discipline through the day.
Verified 2026-09-18
Fratelli Pulcinella grew from a backyard catering pop-up in North Parramatta into a proper wood-fired restaurant on Church Street. Brother Simone Zullo placed first in the Classical category of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli Association's World Pizza Championships, judged in Naples, for what judges considered the most authentically Neapolitan pizza in the field.
Verified 2026-09-18
