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A TINY new pizzeria in Juffair has the recipe for success, serving up flavourful cheesy goodness that is simply bellissimo.
Pizzamo is a quaint take-away restaurant designed by Mohammed Al Helaibi, offering customers Italian favourites made with quality ingredients.
The 45-year-old banker has always had a passion for pizza and Italian food. It was his guilty doughy pleasure, feasting on it at least four times-a-week. He would spend hours in his kitchen in Sanad making fresh pizza smothered with mozzarella.
Now, instead of slaving away in his kitchen, Mohammed is spreading his passion with others and believes his outlet will rise to the occasion.
Mohammed said: “My aim is to be the best pizza place in town and, unlike the franchises, we offer true Italian taste.
“I believe the reason our pizza is a hit with customers is due to the fresh ingredients and the dough. Our dough is tender, not hard and crusty. The pizzas are also filling, light and not oily.
“My son Elyas, who is 15, also loves pizza and can go through a whole one on his own and still have room for more.
“I love seeing people smile when they dig into the pizza. I never understood my mum constantly smiling at me when she would watch me eat the food she made. Now I completely get it. It’s great to see someone love it as much as you do.”
Mohammed still needed a chef to put his Italian creations together and found his man during a chance encounter at a pizzeria.
Mohammed said: “I was at a restaurant and ordered a pizza. It was love at first bite. I just had to meet the chef and that’s when I first met Chef Solaiman Abdulrahman. I never met anyone that makes pizza like him.”
For that authentic flavour, Chef Solaiman bakes all the pizzas in a masonry (brick) oven and is assisted by two sous chefs.
Aside from Chef Solaiman’s flat bread creations, there are also an array of pasta dishes to choose from, paninis and risottos. The chef will even customise the dish if requested, such as add chicken to a fettuccine alfredo or make the fettuccine with rosé sauce instead of just cream.
While Mohammed is thrilled with the small business he has now, he has dreams of someday opening his own sit-in restaurant.
Mohammed said: “For now I’m working on perfecting all the dishes and then within three months I aim to open another outlet either in Sanad or Isa Town. At a later stage, I want to open more Pizzamos, one in Budaiya and one in Amwaj. Then I will move out of Juffair and have a proper dining restaurant.
“At the moment, I may not have the ambiance or atmosphere but what Chef Solaiman and I do have is great food. We are focusing on quality first and then we will create a proper dining experience. Also, once we establish the business and the brand, we will probably franchise it.”
Being an Italian food fanatic with a weakness for ‘ooey gooey’ pizza, I couldn’t wait that long and decided to put his cuisine to the test. And nothing can express love more than sharing a delicious pizza with my hubby so I dragged Sam along.
According to Mohammed, the best sellers are the Speciale and Pizzamo. The Speciale has fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, olives, tomato sauce and the chef’s secret cream sauce. The Pizzamo is filled with pepperoni, mozzarella, tomato sauce, black olives, green peppers and mushrooms.
We opted for an 18inch of each, which is made up of eight large slices. Once upon a time, I could devour an eight-slice pizza in one sitting but after seeing the size of each slice, I knew I had met my match.
Sam isn’t a big fan of pizza as he finds most too oily and heavy. But it was different this time around; he actually smiled and went for more. While he couldn’t get enough of the Pizzamo, the Speciale captured my heart and tickled my taste buds. I loved the cheese and the sauce. It was simple in ingredients but rich in flavour.
Mohammed insisted that we try their popular pastas as well, offering us the penne rose and the fettuccine alfredo. The penne is a combination of mushrooms, rosé sauce and mozzarella. Mohammed added chicken to feed my carnivorous husband.
I’m quite fussy when it comes to fettuccine alfredo as I feel that restaurants never get the cream portion right. After a few bites I tend to feel nauseous and heavy. There was none of that with this fettuccine. It was light and airy, with just the right cream-to-pasta ratio.
The penne was also ‘perfecto’. After eating half our meal at the take-away outlet, we packed the rest to go (well what was left of it) and rushed home to pop in a comedy and finish off our pasta and pizza in our sweats.
Usually on a bad day, Sam would order a pizza for me from a fast food chain to cheer me up. I guess he will be calling Juffair from now on, instead.
Pizzamo, which is open from noon to 1am, also offers delivery.
For further details, contact 17001701 or follow the restaurant on Insatgram @1Pizzamo.
