thinks that you should never underestimate the power of simplicity. When Franchina was growing up in , an inner-north Perth suburb that’s been a hub for the city’s Italian immigrants since the 1950s, his diet often involved soulful, home-style pizzas made with unfussy ingredients. It would become part of his culinary DNA.
“My dad moved here in the ‘50s and my mum in the ‘80s from a village at the base of Mount Etna and our family is as Sicilian as Sicilian gets,” Franchina says with a laugh. “My mum would make us pizza in the gas oven with toppings such as ham, cheese, tomato, salami – the things you would put on a sandwich. As Italian as we were, we didn’t use any of that fancy stuff. No sun-dried tomatoes or eggplant! All my mates would come around and they would just love it.”
The art of making pizza can sometimes be dangerously synonymous with novelty. (Black truffles! Duck! Sriracha!) But at , Franchina has been refining his mother’s crowd-pleasing formula for nearly 20 years.
The suburban pizzeria, which recently won , has long been a regular fixture in the lives of the local community, thanks to classics such as Napoletana (tomato, olives, anchovies), Margherita (herbs, cheese, tomato) and the Via Etna, a reference to the Franchinas’ heritage, via onion, garlic and the slightly non-traditional jalapeño. But Franchina is more interested in staying true to his own style of pizza, something he describes as a mashup of Italian, Australian and American traditions, than he is in winning authenticity wars.
Covering the bases at Mario's Pizza. Source: Mario's Pizza
The popularity of the Hawaiian – itself invented by , a Greek immigrant who relocated to Ontario, Canada and added pineapple to a ham and cheese pizza (possibly inspired by the era’s craze for – is a case in point.
“Some people hate Hawaiian pizza, but I literally go through a pallet of pineapple in three months,” says Franchina, who believes that pizza has always been part of his destiny. He adds that the original Mario’s Pizza was established a street away from his house by a non-Italian before he took over the business about two years in.
“There’s always been an Italian club in the area and when they order pizzas, they always order Hawaiian. Although we use gas conveyor ovens that were invented in America, most of our vegies are Western Australian, and our cheese comes from New Zealand. I think we’ve evolved a style of pizza in Australia that tastes completely different. We get a lot of international visitors in the store commenting on it.”
Some people hate Hawaiian pizza, but I literally go through a pallet of pineapple in three months.
Adaptation and tradition often characterise the lives of many second-generation immigrants. Pizza may be the perfect symbol for the way these themes can intersect. At Mario’s Pizza, Franchina pays homage to his wife, with the Tiabella, a vegetarian version that includes capsicum and curry powder. “My wife is half Indian and half Italian and you wouldn’t think curry powder belongs on a pizza, but it smells so good when it comes out of the oven!” he says.
As for tradition? It’s literally baked into the base of his pizza bases in the form of an aged mother dough that’s long been passed down through his family.
“When my mother moved to Perth in the early '80s, people wouldn't really rely on instant yeast, so there would be a little ball of this mother dough that would pass through different Italian households before ending up at my mum’s,” he explains, adding that his mother, Carmela, who’s now in her early seventies, still works with him in the store. “The recipe has been exchanged between my mother’s friends, aunties and cousins. We roll it into a percentage of all our dough and then it becomes part of the next batch. In Europe, they sometimes use a mother dough that’s been around for 200 years. Mine is nowhere near as old as that, but there’s nearly 50 years of history in it.”
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