Two tiny tots stand on a white stool, balancing on their tiptoes as they lean forwards towards a marble slab, its veined surface dusted with flour. They’ve thumbed, prodded, pulled and poked their mini lumps of pizza dough into messy balls, and they’ve been concentrating and quiet while at work. About 20 minutes ago, as they watched the pizza chef at Bondi’s Da Orazio go about his work, he cut off a chunk of dough, divided it into two portions and handed them to the children.

If this is a cunning trick to win parent-pleasing acumen, it succeeded. Way better than an iPad. “Shhh!” I can almost hear Maurice Terzini, owner operator of the pizza place, whispering as he reads this, “they’ll all want a go!” 

Designer and artist Louise Olsen recommended this as a family place and so I took my two-year-old and four-year-old nephew and niece. They happily shared our adult food and ended up making pizza bases: it passed the test.

I have to admit to approaching Da Orazio with caution - “casual yet stylish” can ring alarm bells. And very Bondi it is. But it’s also very, very good.

Young, buzzy staff wearing their specially-designed hippyish whites work a bright room that is filled with funk music, families and Sunday long lunchers.

Poured concrete, exposed lightbulbs, white tables and marble working surfaces are at once self-consciously un-trattoria like and self-consciously Italian. There are icons and cultural nods that help to anchor a room that might otherwise be clinical. A chianti bottle on the counter-top near the open kitchen, a cross on the wall and strings of garlic near the pizza counter help to define it as southern Italian, as sunny, as holiday-feeling.

Terzini's waitering staff are efficient, if unsmiling, and the food - spanking ingredients, done simply - arrives at pace. Within minutes our shared antipasto is set down, followed by a panzanella salad and our grilled octopus.

A great snowball of ricotta sits beside the youngest, wettest burrata and a slice of harder, young sheep’s cheese with green lozenge-like olives, a plate of salumi, mortadella and prosciutto and another of simply grilled zucchini, eggplant, corn and capsicum.

The octopus, as Olsen recommended, is spot-on - charcoaly and meaty and, to me, one of the kings of the sea.

Pizzas are in the Neapolitan style - a slightly thicker, elastic crust that folds and makes the ideal vessel for the masses of fresh cheese in our midst. Our passata-free prosciutto sits under a pile of rocket and parmesan, each piece of offending green diligently removed from the base by the two-year-old. Porchetta - pork from the rotisserie, the other specialty of the house - glides past us, dripping with juices and wedged between pizza bread.  

The four year-old makes headway into the ricotta and egg-yolk raviolo. Pierce the pasta pillow and egg yolk runs into the buttery, sage sauce. She says it is “lovely”. I’d go much further.

Our lamb skewers or arrosticini, a tradition from Abruzzo, are a little disappointing. But since my Uighur kebab in Chinatown with Ignatius Jones (cf: this page  three weeks ago), most kebabs will miss the mark, I fear. It’s not smoky or salty or fatty enough to be moreish and to necessitate the lemon it sits beside.

I would elaborate on the tiramisu in its preserves jar but it was snaffled by the babes. It was sloppy and sweet, I can safely confirm.

A bit of show is rarely a bad thing. When it’s combined with great ingredients and pizza chefs who invite toddlers into their floury, play-doh-y world, it is a hands-down winner.