The Nonna, she sees everything!
We love the Nonna in the Maybe Frank family. She’s on the front of cover of the cocktail menu and she is fabulous. Ok, she’s a caricature holding a rolling pin in the air but her cocktails are on point.
As you might have guessed, Maybe Frank is not your average Italian joint. With restaurants in Surry Hills and Randwick, it could be, but it definitely is not.
Tucked back from Bourke Street, just across from The Beresford, the Surry Hills outpost of Maybe Frank is busy most nights of the week. Dark and moody, with filament lamps and a neon sign that reads ‘One more slice’, it’s cool but not too cool for school. Families, couples, singles sitting at the bar – this is Italian for every type of eater. And that’s the best part, the team want to make you feel at home. This isn’t about convoluted, high brow food, and you can get takeaway, but this isn’t takeaway pizza as you know it.
Francesco Repole is the restaurant’s ‘head pizzaiolo’ and he keeps the woodfire oven very busy, with a dedicated local following of diners who keep coming back for more. And we can’t blame them.
Grab some warm, doughy pieces of garlic bread straight from the wood fire oven to start, before perusing the classic menu, the signature menu, the Bianche (white mozzarella base), the vegetarian and the calzone menu – and that’s just the pizza portion of the dishes. They’re big, full of fresh produce and served perfectly cooked, steaming from the oven.
Then there’s an array of classic antipasti – arancini, fried polenta, polpette meatballs – and pasta dishes like saffron dough gnocchi, slow cooked fettuccine lamb argue and pesto lasagne. The mozzarella bar is like a salad bar on steroids – first choose your mozzarella, add some focaccia, and then pick your paring. Caprese, prosciutto, eggplant, bacon, artichoke. None of them will let you down.
Grab a half carafe, or a full carafe, of the house Italian wine and you really can’t go wrong.
But wait, there’s more. We can’t forget dessert. The bomboloni deep fried doughnuts stuffed with ricotta or Nutella make this a carb load worth taking.
Maybe Frank
Shop 9, 417-421 Bourke St, Surry Hills
Opening hours:
Tues – Thurs: 5.30pm – 11pm
Fri, Sat: 5.30 – 11.30pm
Sun: 5pm – 10pm
http://www.maybefrank.com/locations
