Epolito's

Overview

Epolito's has been running out of South Auckland for ten years, gaining a reputation amongst many people as the best pizza in Auckland. They have now moved to Ponsonby in order to share the love - specifically the love that they put into making their tasty pizzas - with inner-city dwellers. The ambiance and design of this pizzeria made it a surprising edition to the set of shops on the border of Grey Lynn/Ponsonby, mainly because of Epolito's lack of middle class sensibilities, which is characteristic of the majority of cafes and restaurants in the Grey Lynn and Ponsonby area.

The pizza is very good, with an abundance of tasty sauce complimented by cheese on top of a thin-yet-still-soft base. A decent range of vegetarian options are available such as the East Side pizza, which was seriously good. It had whole slices of lemon baked into the pizza with a generous amount of artichokes scattered on top. Their meat options are also great. The homemade Sicilian-style sausage pizza was a favourite, as it had an unexpected freshness of herbs and garlic. Meatball and Pepperoni pizzas are also available, and if you want to double up you can add any meat to you pizza for $4 for 14" and $5 for 18". The pizza's are also huge with the smaller size of 14" being easily enough for two hungry people. The 14" pizzas are priced between $18-$24, and the 18" pizzas cost $24-$30.

Unfortunately the ambiance was not as good as the pizza, and the place felt more like somewhere you would expect to walk into in the middle of Queen Street rather than Ponsonby or Grey Lynn - fast dance music blared through the speakers at an uncomfortably loud level for the smallish size of the space. The space was a bit cramped for the number of people and tables there and the decor was flat.

Epolito's is open from 5pm until midnight, making them an easy dinner option for any time of the evening. While the pizza is good, and the drinks reasonably priced, our recommendation would be to grab it takeaway and enjoy it at home.