Two-hat Italian restaurant launches casual pizza spin-off
One of Sydney's most celebrated Italian restaurateurs is expanding his Crown Sydney footprint with an accessible spin-off designed to bring fine-dining quality to a broader audience — at nearly half the price.
Alessandro and Anna Pavoni, the duo behind six of Sydney's most respected Italian restaurants, have never put a full-sized pizza on the menu at their flagship venues. That changes on April 22, with the launch of Pizza'Mare at Crown Sydney.
"I was just waiting for the right moment," chef Alessandro Pavoni told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Pizza'Mare will occupy the upper mezzanine of a'Mare — the Pavonis' two-hatted fine diner recognised in The Sydney Morning Herald 2026 Good Food Guide. It is designed as a more accessible entry point into the precinct. The concept trades tableside theatre and labour-intensive preparations for a streamlined offering, with pasta prices slashed by roughly 50 per cent. Guests will still enjoy the same waterfront views, house-made pasta and Pavoni's culinary direction.
The kitchen team, including Puglia-born pizzaiolo Paolo Lacarpia and a'Mare executive chef Giuseppe Fuzio, spent the past year developing and testing their dough recipe at Manly's Cibaria restaurant. The "biga" base they arrived at requires a three-day production process — a slow pre-fermentation that Pavoni says keeps the finished crust light and digestible, landing somewhere between traditional Neapolitan and contemporary styles.
"We all feel the stress of the [rising] cost of living, so we needed to offer cheaper options," Pavoni said.
"Fine dining is becoming harder and harder because it requires a lot more labour and the produce is a lot more expensive, but there's only so much customers are prepared to pay."
The menu leads with a focused pizza selection alongside antipasti and classic pasta dishes, staying true to Italian tradition with a few produce-driven points of difference.
Alongside a classic margherita, the menu features more elevated options including the amar'inara — built around yellowfin tuna crudo, confit cherry tomatoes and stracciatella — and the gamberi e zucchini, topped with king prawns, yellow cherry tomato salsa and zucchini flower.
Pizza'Mare is part of a broader transformation of the a'Mare precinct into what the Pavonis describe as an "Italian hub" across two floors. The third element of the trio is Vista'Mare, a dedicated aperitivo bar with outdoor seating and the only Campari Seltz machine in NSW — a pressure-driven dispenser imported from Milan that dates to 1915.
Jonathan Jackson, 7th April 2026
