Little Caesars Pizzeria, Leederville

For years, Little Caesars original branch in Mundaring has been considered amongst the best pizzas on offer in Perth. In addition to locals, Perth city residents as well as tourists would journey all the way from Perth’s inner suburbs to Mundaring just to eat the famous pizzas. Although the hike to Mundaring for pizza is probably too much for the common Perth person, I have a couple of times in the past been up that way to sample the pizzas - remembering them to be well prepared pizzas with generous and very uniformly topped pizzas that offer the full taste in every bite, yet retaining a non-soggy pizza base.

In contrast to the relatively distant location of Little Caesars in Mundaring, Little Caesars Pizzeria’s newer Leederville location is smack bang in the middle of Leederville's bustling central cafe strip. The question is: does the newest Little Caesars measure up to the name the Mundaring Little Caesars has built?

Little Caesars Pizzeria in Leederville offers dine-in or takeaway. The establishment looks modern and seems to fit right into Leederville’s youthful, happening, and somewhat grungy atmosphere. The tables are reasonably packed in to maximise seating in a small area, and overall gives a casual but somewhat trendy feel.

On perusal of the menu, there is quite a large variety of pizzas on offer separated into different categories (e.g. seafood, vegetarian, meat, and even dessert pizzas). The selection contains some interesting non-standard combinations and falls amongst the more modern "gourmet" style of pizzas that are popping up over Perth. There are two sizes on offer – with the use of BC and LC which presumably stand for Big Caesar and Little Caesar. Whilst the takeaway pizzas come in standard brown pizza boxes, if you dine in the pizzas are served on a metal plate that is stacked on top of a metal pizza stand that raises the pizza above table level.

An initial comment in relation to the style of pizzas offered is that the pizza base is medium thick, not oily, and yet not too doughy. The toppings are quite generous and reasonably uniformly spread through the pizzas so with a good portion of the pizzas on offer, each bite pretty much gets some of each core ingredient.

Chicken and leek - $19.50 (BC or large size)

This pizza included chicken, bacon, and leek.

The bacon was salty but surprisingly the pizza wasn't as salty as I was expecting it to be with the bacon in it. Also, to be expected, the bacon had those unhealthy fatty bits but there did seem to be a good proportion of meat to fat in it.

The creamy sauce matched the pizza well and in a good quantity, though for me the pizza would be a bit too creamy to eat in any large quantity. Not being a standard pizza topping ingredient that I have seen, the leek was an interesting ingredient in this. It was fresh, but had a slightly tough leek texture and mild leek taste that added and changed the pizza’s overall taste and texture. I thought the taste combination was quite nice in a small proportion.

Greek lamb - (large size)

The Greek lamb pizza had the typical design of other Greek style lamb pizzas on offer. With lamb marinated in rosemary, kalamata olives, feta, caramelised onion, lemon juice, cracked pepper and tzatziki (garlic sauce) there would be no mistaking the Greek influence.

The marinated lamb on the pizza tasted sweet and was cooked well done throughout. However, the lamb was still moist inside but the outside taste/texture was a tad dry - though saying that, the taste of the cooked lamb with the sweet caramelised onion gave the whole pizza a slight tasty sweetness that kept the pizza from becoming boring.

Small size - dine in

The olives and fetta were scattered and not dominant on the pizza, giving that little bit of extra Greek-ness to the overall taste of the pizza. The tzatziki sauce added after the pizza was cooked completed the somewhat drier elements of the pizza.

Overall, this was one of the better tasting pizzas I’ve tried at Little Caesars Pizzeria.

Jane’s Addiction - (large size)

This pizza came with marinated prawns, prosciutto, garlic cream sauce, wild rocket pesto, and mozzarella cheese. The king prawns were large and in this garlic cream sauce based pizza, tasted a bit like garlic king prawns. I personally think that the garlic cream sauce matched the seafood rather than tomato paste but made it rich like the chicken and leek pizza above and thus best eaten in moderation.

King Prawns

Even though I don’t normally order seafood pizzas (as I seem to find most don’t do seafood justice) I felt the overall mix of a fair amount of decent king prawns coupled with the more fancier than ham prosciutto quite nice even with it being a more sparsely topped pizza.

BBQ - (large size)

This pizza included bacon, ham, chicken, BBQ sauce, onion, and cheese.

A slice of the BBQ

The toppings were diced up and quite evenly spread throughout the pizza and surprisingly didn't seem oozing with fat like some other BBQ meat pizzas out there. The BBQ sauce and in fact the whole pizza flavour was relatively mild and didn't seem specially flavoured in any way. The pizza didn't have any strong elements of sweetness or juicy flavour, and I felt it was quite an ordinary tasting pizza but without a big oily aftertaste. Perhaps this is why it’s called a BBQ pizza as opposed to something that emphasises meat.

The Max (the lot) – (large size)

This pizza came with ham, mushroom, bacon, pepperoni, olives, onion, capsicum, fresh tomato, pineapple, cheese, and pizza sauce.

Given the name "The Max" I was somewhat underwhelmed. Sure the pizza had a fair amount of topping on it but nothing about it stood out to make the pizza special. The toppings were nearly randomly spread throughout and the taste was ok but didn’t feel like a “max” pizza to me.

Mudhoney - $14

This pizza came in a small size, but given how sweet it was you don’t really need a big serve.

The pizza was chocolate mud cake on a pizza base, topped with honey and chocolate sauce, as well as white and milk chocolate buttons, and dusted with icing sugar. The pizza topped seamlessly with the mud cake was quite thick, but the chocolate had melted so much that it soaked into the mud cake portion of the pizza and was moist. However, the bottom pizza base layer had not been soaked through and was still crusty and held the shape of each slice.

Chocolate mud cake and buttons up close

As a dessert pizza, this was pretty good – though admittedly I think this is the first time I have tried a dessert pizza. It had the makings of a warm chocolate dessert with mud cake, chocolate sauce, and chocolate buttons to give it that chocolate dessert feel. The honey added to the pizza with its own distinct sweetness. My only issue is that it was perhaps a bit too sweet for my taste but nonetheless that didn't stop me from eating it.

Overall, though it has been a while since I’ve been there, I can’t help but feel that the Little Caesars in Mundaring makes the Little Caesars’ style of pizza better. Whilst not a bad pizza, the Leederville branch just doesn’t seem to stand out as a pizza place I would insist on going to. However, it’s definitely worth a look.

In summary, Little Caesars is a gourmet pizza place that through the reputation of its original sister company, interesting menu, prime location, and youthful and bright décor is able to draw in the crowds. The pizza isn’t so bad, but each pizza and the style from the base to the way the toppings are added are up to personal preference.

Points to note: Little Caesars can get quite busy so can be hard to find a seat at times, or you may want to book ahead. The menu is available online if you wish to order ahead. Pizzas are available dine-in or takeaway.

Go for: Gourmet pizza that has made a name for itself.



Little Caesars Pizzeria – Leederville Store
127 Oxford Street
LEEDERVILLE WA 6007
(08) 9444 0499
http://www.littlecaesarspizzeria.com.au

Trading Hours
7 days a week – 5pm till late