Pizza e cinema

I Carusi II
231 Barkly Street, St Kilda (map)
9593 6033

Went to the movies with Mum and Dad last weekend, down at the Astor. Before the movie we decided to grab a quick bite down at I Carusi II, the St Kilda sequel pizzeria to East Brunswick's I Carusi. I've been to both versions of I Carusi, and never had a dud pizza.


I almost ALWAYS order the Funghi Porcini pizza at I Carusi, but this time I was determined to try something different. The Zucchini pizza caught my eye: tomato, mozzarella, zucchini, mint and chilli ($16, but I paid the extra $2 to upgrade to mozzarella di bufala - money well spent, in my opinion). I was curious to see how the slightly unusual choice of mint would work... and folks, it rocked. The chilli was powerful but the mint gave the pizza a fantastic lift. You must try this pizza!


Mamma prefers pizze bianche, so she ordered the Broccoli pizza ($16.50 in bianco, with mozzarella, broccoli, lemon, chilli and parmigiano). It was fairly similar to mine (again it was pretty damn chillied, but the lemon kept it fresh).


Dad had the Speciale pizza ($17), with tomato, mozzarella, soppressa, roasted peppers, artichokes and olives. Another good 'un. These guys know how to make proper Italian pizze.


Then it was back up the road to the Astor. The Astor is one of my very favourite places in Melbourne and has been since I was 14, coming along to see double features on a school night. They're showing the Rear Window/Vertigo double again in a few months, yay! Rear Window is my favourite Hitchcock film and as for Vertigo, well, I'm such a Hitchcock geek that when I went to San Francisco I completed my own little Vertigo pilgrimage of many of the filming locations... :)

Just being in the Astor lobby makes me happy.


And this is Marzipan, the Astor cat. She's 15, so was just a kitten when I first started visiting the Astor. It's always nice to see her sitting in the lobby or on one of the couches upstairs, and I remember being MOST chuffed when she once elected to sit on my lap during a midnight screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Back in the day when she was a little more spry, she liked running along the parapet at the front of the balcony during a movie, startling the front row. She freaked everyone out last year when she went missing, but happily she showed up again two weeks later!