Veganissimo! Authentic Plant Based / Vegan Italian

Ellie Golding, Natalie Portman, Ellen De Generes, Joaquin Phoenix, Russell Brand, Miley Cyrus, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic - what's the common denominator (aside from being very famous and influential)? - They're all Vegan.

It's no secret that the vegan movement is on an exponential rise. With anything game changing, the Vegan movement has and continues to cause much controversy amongst the media, health authorities and across our own dining tables.

(Pictured: typical foods from the Mediterranean diet)

Where do we stand? Well...funnily enough, as Italians, the foundation of our Mediterranean diet is herbs, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fruits, vino and of course, more vino. We can't forget that the Mediterranean diet is not strictly vegan (it also includes seafood, eggs and a bit of meat), though a large portion is fundamentally plant based.

At Pizzantica, developing and being able to offer a seperate authentic Italian plant based menu was a natural progression and evolution from our menu (which is based on traditional Italian mediterranean recipes from our Nonna's and Nonno's). We just had to leave out non-vegan friendly ingredients - EASY enough....and find a substitute for cheese that would maintain our extremely high standard of pizza quality - NOT SO EASY.

The problem-o we faced: Neapolitan style Pizza (our speciality) is traditionally made with minimal toppings to bring out the true flavours of the ingredients. With cheese being one of the very few and KEY ingredients, quality is imperative.

In development, we threw out an abundance of vegan pizza because we weren't satisfied with the plethora of vegan "cheese" options (we seriously didn't know that amount of poor quality vegan "cheese" existed).

But in true Pizzantica style, we persisted. We found a vegan cheese product, that for some, is hardly discernible to our standard mozzarella.

(Photos by Michelle Chen)

We had the pleasure of having Michelle Chen (an Australian Vegan based Food Blogger) stop by to taste and critique the menu for us:

"I can confirm that the new plant based menu at Pizzantica tastes epic! Best vegan cheese and toppings were simple but everything made sense and the pizza dough is just the way I like it!"

We're not trying to toot our Pizza Kombi's own horn, but with some of the feedback we're receiving (from our customers which we've kept anonymous), we believe that we're producing some of the tastiest vegan Italian in Brisbane:

"Vegans everywhere will love you"

"Vegan Nutella pizza was the bomb!!"

"The meat alternatives in the bolognese and salsiccia e cipolle pizza were very good"

"I'm not a fan of vegan cheese normally but the ones you use were amazing..."

"OMG!! Thank you so much, the Montanara was amazing, would love to see it as a dessert"

We encourage all our plant based friends to stop by and indulge. Our Plant Based Menu is available during all opening hours at Pizzantica Pizzeria New Farm www.pizzantica.com/newfarm - Bookings Essential.