there was talk of a mamak roti breakfast, but by the time we got round to it, it was lunch with another kind of flatbread: pizza at D.O.C.! i’d been wanting to come here for aaages — a couple of months, anyway — and beloved interstate friends with errands in carlton and a penchant for pizza were the perfect excuse. arriving at the tail end of conventional lunchtime, we were lucky to get the end of the long table by the big window, and i was lucky to have the winter sun streaming through said window, warming my back.

a compact, handsome italian man presented us with menus, typed up in a 90s typewriter font: it felt like coming home. we saw the antipasti at the next table, and smelt the truffle oil wafting from passing pizze. we took too long to decide; we wanted one of everything. what we ended up with was a fat plait of mozzarella with a small salad of shaved fennel and sweet, meaty mouthfuls of whole white anchovies…

a pizza of salsicce and pureed broccoli — which caused me to gasp in amazement when it was placed in front of us. it was like a platter of spring meadow, with the delicate green crema di broccoli and the rosy blossoms of sausage meat. i believe i may have clapped, and then when i actually did bite into it, the applause rang loud in my head. i find myself thinking about it a day later, and plotting my return.

and the pizza abruzzese — topped with paper thin slices of porchetta, mustard fruit and radicchio. how festive! if it is the intriguing premise of mustard fruit that compels you to order this pizza, be warned that an uneven distribution of the tiny cubes of candied fruit means that your slice might only be pork belly fatty crunchy. even though it will be delicious, you may be disappointed. fortunately, my slice had two bits of mustard fruit on it, and i can tell you that it made my experience a little bit like christmas. the combination of pork belly fatty crunchy and candy sweet fruity softness made my brain wobble with glee. (of course, the stern radicchio kept deliriousness in check.)

we also had a salad of rocket and pear dressed in pecorino and the tiniest hint of honey, and then we sat, sated, and considered the dessert menu: a tiramisu made with sweet goat cheese; a nutella calzoncino, before taking ourselves, after a detour at the spice shop round the corner, across the road to brunetti.

here is how you cap off a meal of gold standard pizza: behold the piemontese with its jaunty golden hazelnut crown, a crunchy profiterole filled with an almost unnecessarily tall column of hazelnut cream — that’s cream, flecked with ground-up hazelnuts — all the better to hide its central artery of sweet-savoury hazelnut praline. there will be waddling after, waddling to the corner to bid your farewells, and then waddling the three blocks to the homeward-bound tram… but absolutely no regrets.