DeVita — Restaurant in Sydney

DeVita is a bustling venue in Manly, on the Northern Beaches of NSW. Its partakes in the traditional Neapolitan form of pizza making with their own pizza oven being shipped brick by brick and tile by tile from Napoli. Neapolitan pizzas can be cooked quick and aren't what your regular Aussie is used to. It may come across as a somewhat more "soggy" pizza but the dough is some of the best you will ever taste. The tip is to fold the crust corners together or my style is to fold the tip back to the crust and eat the pizza that way. DeVita's pizza is one of the best pizzas I have ever eaten, only beaten for me by Verace in Macquarie Park. The venue is quite large and, it would appear, always packed to the rafters. They concentrate on freshness and high quality ingredients that will nicely pair with the perfect base. You MUST order the Burrata e Prosciutto - just delicious. We also ate the Calamari Fritti. It was OK - but if you see something else you like you won't be missing a MUST EAT meal. I can also highly recommend the Nepolitana Lasagna if you are not into pizza or wish to compliment a pizza order for larger groups. It is made with meatballs and it is absolutely divine. As for the pizzas - EAT THEM ALL - haha. They are so good. I would suggest the Marinara if you want an unusually shaped pizza that is perfect instagram food porn - it also tastes good too. The Quattro Staggioni was my fave pizza of the night - 4 flavours pizza! Tomato base, fior di latte, ham, salame, artichokes, mushrooms, basil. It was just sublime. The Siciliana is also thoroughly enjoyable. With their superbly made pizzas bases and fresh ingredients the pizzas are all going to be good - it just depends on what flavours will appeal to you most. And if by chance you are in a large group - order the metre long pizzas - they are mind blowing in visual appeal and packed with so much food. For dessert the host brought mum the Pastiera Napoletana due to its incredible story. The modern pastiera was invented in a Neapolitan convent. An unknown nun wanted that cake, symbol of the Resurrection, to have the perfume of the flowers of the orange trees which grew in the convent’s gardens. She mixed a handful of wheat to the white ricotta cheese, then she added some eggs, symbol of the new life, some water which had the fragrance of the flowers of the spring time, candied citron and aromatic Asian spices. AMAZING - as for me - of course I had the Affogato - damn nice. We also finished it off with a Grappa Bianca aperitif thanks to our host. Oh yeah - should probably mention - the place has a fantastic wine and drinks menu. It's the entire package really. Get into it if...

I’ve been going to De Vita for a decade and today was the last time. This is the first time that I write a review and it took something special to do so.

The manager at this place has zero customer service standards. I ordered a half-meter pizza with 3 choices for me and my young kids and simply asked that they make the margarita portion bigger than the other two third. The whole situation was weird because the Pizzaiolo was waiting for the order to come through so that he can start making the order (there were no other orders at the time) while the manager was insisting that the special request is entered into the system first. She was trying to place the special request into the system which took more than 10 minutes while standing right next to the Pizzaiolo.

I started to get the sense that they might be getting my order wrong and asked to confirm that no extra charge is going to be incurred for the change (which also makes sense because margarita has no toppings and shouldn’t cost more to make). When we got the bill they indeed charged me extra and instead of trying to understand why it doesn’t make sense to charge me extra, the manager choose to have a loud conversation with me in front of the other customers. I eventually realised that this is a lost cause and...

They burnt the toast used for my Bruschetta, and covered them with toppings and served it anyway.

I asked the waitress to show the burnt toast to the chef, and to seriously ask him, did he really expect that I wouldn't notice?

This must have pissed him off because without my asking for my meal to be replaced, he made a new one for me, but this time he just served the bread untoasted. Clearly he was an idiot who didn't even bother looking at the toast. In places it was burnt half way through - it was charcoal. So his way of coping with his mistake was to pretend that his customer was making up a story. I had a mouthful and left the meal.

The tomatoes were cherry tomatoes that had obviously not been freshly cut, and had been drowning in something for God's knows how long, and were, when served, completely devoid of flavour.

Then my main arrived. Spaghetti with a Bolognese sauce. The spaghetti was cooked to perfection. The sauce (way, way, too much sauce) was watery, bland, and clearly not a mix of pork and veal.

Nice wine list.

Excellent service. The staff were let down by an abysmally...