Cafe Portofino, New Farm: A cafe with decent pizza

Cafe Portofino
650 Brunswick Street
New Farm
(07) 3358 4002

Picture this.. its Sunday and close to lunch time and my better half wants to do some furniture shopping. Not my favorite past time and definitely not something to be done on an empty stomach. I remember that I picked up some Grabone.com vouchers for the place which entitled us to 2 pizza's. Perfect.. I rang and made the reservation.
The restaurant is located on Brunswick Street in New Farm. As it was Sunday afternoon and the weather was pretty crap, parking on the road was easy. I was a bit surprised to tell you the truth, but maybe it's normal.
The actual restaurant is a real cafe setup. Judging by the opening hours, a large part of their business is breakfast. They have a small outside undercover seating area facing onto Brunswick and a larger indoors section. It was very quiet, and looked like there was only 1 other table. That's fine by me, just means my food should come out a bit earlier.
Being a cafe, I am a bit suspicious of the quality of the pizza we are going to get.. so expectations are low at this point.
Upon arriving, we were promptly seen to by staff who got our table outside. Water was placed on the table before the menus (I like that.. nothing worse than waiting for a drink)
Now, I have 2 kids with varying fondness for variation in their diet - but they both love Tropical or Hawaiian pizza. I know what you're thinking - real pizza's don't have pineapple, but that's what the kids eat, not me.. and if they have a mouthful of pizza, they are not nagging us.. get the picture.
So, the menu does not really include any "kid friendly" pizza's aka "pizza with pineapple". I ask and was told they have no pineapple. So my suggestion is that if you're planning on bringing kids and they are a little menu challenged, this may not be the best place.
Most of the pizza choices are not traditional in my opinion, but they are not obvious "gourmet".. you know, the pizza's with exotic ingredients just for the sake of it.. the items seemed to have a premium but traditional feel.. that's important because I like traditional.
So we got the Salami pizza (salami, chilli) and the kids got the Prosciutto pizza (prosciutto with rocket which we removed and ate with the salami pizza).
It took a bit longer than I would have expected given the number of people in the place and I'm not sure what it would be like if it was busy.. maybe the staff were scaled down for Sunday. The wait was not unbearable though..
The pizza's had some of the best bases I have had in ages. The underside of the crust looked like it had been cooked in a wood fired oven, and if not a really hot one. The sauce base was tasty, but not overpowering. The cheese was a bit on top, but not overdone.
Size wise, they were a large portion, I would say a standard large and enough for 2 adults.
My son was not having a bar of the prosciutto regardless of how many times I told him it was just ham. My daughter got right to work. I still think they prefer Eagle boys.
At the end of the meal, we chose a couple of small biscuits from a large selection of Italian cakes and sweets and both were OK. I was almost tempted to have a coffee, but I am a massive snob when it comes to that and didn't want to taint my pizza memories with those of the coffee.

So, what's the verdict.. Look, it's a nice place, would love to check it out for breakie, but again I feel like the prices are too high for a pizza. Our pizza's would have been normally $19 (Prosciutto) and $18 (Salami). At $12-$14, I would definitely go back to try some of their other pizza's, but at the current prices, it's really a special occasion place, and it just doesn't seem to give that vibe. The service was great and attentive without being overbearing.

Pizza: 7/10 - excellent bases, toppings premium but traditional, on the pricey side
Service: 7.5/10 - great service without being overbearing, pizza was slow to come out