Alessandro Pagano has been making pizzas for 20 years. He was just 13 when he first started making dough and tried new things. Alessandro had a lot of different ideas with the dough he made. One was deep frying it, then putting sauce, cheese and basil on top. Then he tried cooking it in a fan forced oven and finishing it off on the grill to give it a wood fired look.
Back then his parents ran a Bistro and customers would ask "Who is the Pizzaiolo?" His parents said "There he is!" They laughed and said "That boy has talent!". It was then that Alessandro thought he should learn from the big boys and gain some experience.
Alessandro worked at Tipico with pizza chef and owner, Massimo, for a few months to be taught the right way and then he was the head pizza chef at Martini Bar in Leichhardt at the age of 17. Alessandro has a lot of experience and has worked at lots of different restaurants around Sydney. In 2014, Alessandro was asked to take on the very busy 'Mercato e Cucina' which was a restaurant, pastry shop, deli, butcher and fruit shop all in one. The place was still under construction when Alessandro went to start his new job and create his own menu, trying out some different doughs. He was so eager to get it right that he brought his own little red electric pizza maker in and said "If it tastes good in this then it will taste even better in the wood fired oven".
Open night came and the bosses were stressed because the oven still hadn't been tested. Alessandro said "Don't worry, it'll be good". Still stressing, they didn't believe him. The first pizza came out and it all started from there. People were lining up for pizza's and finishing them before you knew it. It was a big night for Alessandro and he still walked out with a big smile on his face saying "We smashed it".
Alessandro then left Mercato e Cucina and worked at other pizza restaurants bringing along his passion and skills that were taught by his mentor, Massimo. Alessandro's goal is to make customers smile while eating the pizza's he made. He would occasionally stand back and look out to see whether he'd get that reaction and more times than not, he would. Alessandro now thinks that the restaurant business is too closed up for him to show his passion and skill for pizza making so he has decided to open his own business named 'Arlecchino on the Road' which is new and hopefully successful. Here, he can go out and meet new people and share his love for what he does best. Check out the services we provide through our mobile woodfired pizza catering packages.
Alessandro expects to see big smiles on the faces of his customers because he knows that whatever comes out of his oven is served full of great flavour of the best quality imagined.