Umu Pizza

The food scene in Auckland is so exciting. There are so many new food places now and my list of places to go to keeps growing. The latest addition to the scene is UMU Pizza. If you love a good pizza, this is a place to check out. I’ve been twice and have tried 6 out of the 8 pizzas they have on offer so if you want to know my thoughts and more info about this place, continue down below.

UMU’s menu is pretty simple and I like that. They have 8 pizzas named # ONE to # EIGHT to make it even easier and all the pizzas have a sourdough base topped with local and organic ingredients.

As I mentioned above, I’ve tried 6/8 so here are some of the pizzas I’ve tasted. When I was editing the photos, I realised it’s not easy to make pizza look great but I assure you, they tasted better than what they looked like in my photos. Plus it was night time when I took so I didn’t have natural lighting.

This is # TWO which has tomato, mozzarella, basil for $16. This is your classic Margherita pizza and you can’t go wrong with this one. I had two slices of this one so it was good.

This is # FOUR which has wood fired potato, semi dried tomato manchego and rosemary for $20. I don’t think I’ve ever had potato on a pizza so this was different to me. I also don’t usually like tomatoes (especially big chunks of it) but the dried tomatoes on this one was nice.

If you like spicy, # SIX will probably be for you. This one has harissa, merguez, feta, herb yoghurt, dukkah for $23. I cannot handle spicy food so I could only tolerate one slice of this but the merguez or sausage was so tasty. Apparently this is quite a favourite.

The last pizza I tried on my first time there was # EIGHT which has mozzarella, pancetta, field mushroom, pecorino, garlic oil for $24. This was my favourite. If you love mushrooms, you’ll love this.

On my second time back at UMU, I tried two more pizzas. One the top left is # FIVE which has tomato, grana, sicilian sausage, onion, chilli flake, fresh oregano for $25. On the top right is # SEVEN which has tomato, mozzarella, goan chorizo, chilli flake, pickled veg for $25. The bottom pizza is #8 because as I mentioned above, it was my favourite so I picked it again.

#5’s sicilian sausage was really tasty and my sister said it was her favourite out of the three. #7 is another spicy one for me because of the chorizo. I love chorizo but because of my low spice tolerance, I can’t have too much of it so this is a pizza I can only have one slice of. It sucks because it’s really good and it was my friend’s favourite one.

As you can see, the pizzas are much better for sharing. They’re about 12 inches each which is perfect for one person too but it’s so much better when you’re with a bunch of people so you can order different ones to try. With the 8 pizzas on offer, there is something for everyone. The best part is the sourdough base. UMU pizza is quite hard to compare to other pizza places.

With regards to the interior, the star of UMU is the big wood-fire pizza oven. The name UMU is actually Maori for oven/earth oven so if you’re wondering about the name, it’s very fitting.

You can feel the heat from the oven from the door as it’s basically the focal point of the place.

I also think it’s quite cool that it’s all out in the open and the kitchen is right at the front facing the footpath.

The inside also has exposed brick and a cute neon pizza slice.

UMU isn’t big and it only seats about 24 people on shared tables. It’s best to come early as they don’t take bookings and they only make 120 pizzas every night. They’ve been selling out too so it’s great that people seem to be loving it too.

From the outside, it’s pretty hard to miss this place because it’s pink, my favourite colour. The millennial pink and branding is so on trend right now. It’s also located in the main street in Kingsland, right across the train station.