Mobile Pizza Catering Camden

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About Pizza Catering in Camden

Camden's old town sits on a rise above the Nepean and still reads as a country town that Sydney has grown towards rather than a suburb Sydney produced. Argyle Street carries the shops and the pubs, John Street climbs past sandstone and Federation frontages towards St John's church, and the spire at the top of that hill is the first thing you see coming in off Narellan Road. Below the town the river flats open out — Onslow Park where the show is held, the sportsgrounds, the low paddocks the Nepean reclaims in a big wet — and the Macarthur district carries on from there through Elderslie, Camden South, Cobbitty and Bringelly. Then, within ten minutes' drive, the pattern breaks completely: Oran Park, Gregory Hills, Harrington Park and Spring Farm are new estates laid over land that was grazed a decade ago. Catering out here is two different jobs, and your address decides which one you have.

The run from our base at Meadowbank is 55km, down the M5 and along Camden Valley Way, or the Hume and across at Narellan, depending on traffic. Travel costs $0 inside our standard service area and the quote states that in writing, so the number you agree to is the number you pay. The part worth discussing beforehand is the last few hundred metres. Acreage addresses towards Cobbitty, Bringelly and Theresa Park often end in an unsealed driveway with a gate that has to be shut behind you, a grid to cross, and gravel that stays soft for days after rain. None of that stops us arriving. What does cost everyone time is finding out at dusk that a loaded vehicle cannot get within eighty metres of the party, along a driveway with no lighting on it whatsoever. Tell us where the van can stand and how far that is from the cooking spot.

On open ground the oven asks for very little, and for one thing absolutely. It wants a patch about three metres square that is firm and level — a slab, a compacted turning circle, the apron in front of a machinery shed — because a heavy oven on soft turf drops a corner and then everything on the bench slides towards it. Above the oven there has to be sky: no pergola roof, no shade sail, no low peppercorn branches. Wind counts for more on acreage than it ever does in town, there being nothing to break it, so we stand the oven where the smoke goes away from your tables and your bar instead of across them. A single 240V point within reach of an extension lead runs our work lights, and where the nearest outlet is in a shed across the yard, solve that in daylight. We bring our fuel in and take the ash away.

The new estates present the opposite problem. Around Oran Park, Gregory Hills, Catherine Field, Currans Hill and the streets below the Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan, blocks are compact, houses are built close to both boundaries, and the alfresco area — the obvious place to feed people — sits under the main roofline, which is precisely where a wood fire cannot go. The answer is normally the paved courtyard just past it, or the driveway. Fences are high and the neighbours are a few metres off, so smoke direction stops being a matter of comfort and becomes a matter of manners; we aim it over the rear boundary or out towards the street, never into the windows next door. Parking is the other estate constant. These streets are narrow and the kerb fills by early evening, so a driveway bay kept clear for the trailer, or a quiet word with a neighbour, saves us a lap of the block.

The Camden bookings a fire suits are the long ones. Weddings held on family land, where the reception is a marquee in a paddock, the afternoon starts early and the night finishes late. Engagement parties, christenings, sixtieth and seventieth birthdays, and the gatherings that fill a farmhouse yard because there are simply too many relatives to fit in a room. Pizza works at all of them because nobody has to be seated for it: food keeps coming through the speeches, the photographs and the second wind at nine o'clock. Classic service is $22 a guest, Premium $30. Setup and service is a separate flat $400 on every booking, and GST is calculated on the subtotal. We quote from twenty guests upwards, and beyond a thousand nothing about the method alters — same fire, same dough, same pace, simply more of everything. Gluten-free bases, vegan cheese and halal options prepared on request are quoted at no extra cost.

What comes out of the oven justifies the drive. Two days of fermentation go into the dough before it is stretched by hand at the bench; on top go San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte, and the fire sits above 400°C, which is what turns a pizza around in roughly a minute and a half. That pace is why a paddock a long way from any kitchen door is not a problem: nothing sits, nothing travels far, nothing turns up lukewarm. Salvatore cooks in front of your guests, and on a dark property the oven becomes the brightest thing in the yard and, without fail, where everyone ends up standing. For a written quote, send the date, the address, the guest number, the dietary list off your RSVPs, and a couple of sentences about the ground: sealed or grass, how close a vehicle gets, whether there is any light. Narellan, Mount Annan, Cobbitty, Picton and Campbelltown are all the same trip.