Serving one of the best, personalised local made pizza's since 1992

Open near the Sandringham and Balmoral road intersection, Calimero pizza and pasta kitchen has been serving the community with love since 1992, and they have only gone bigger and better since then. The kitchen has its main branch at St. Heliers, and now has a second branch right at the heart of Sandringham since July last year.

The best part at Calimero is that when you step in, right from the very beginning to the end everything is personalised. And when we say personalised, it means your pizza and customer service both. The force behind all this is none other than Jeremy and Talita, current owners, of this Italian eatery.

It is very rare to have a good reputation in the food business for this long, Calimero has the name out in the area for making great pizzas for nearly 30 years, said Talita in a very personalised conversation with us.

While you scan the menu for your favorite pick, it is rather a pleasure for vegans and vegetarians to find a whole lot of options. The duo had personally kept in mind the demand to come up with a separate vegetarian menu and not mix with the other common pizza ingredients.

Something that is even more exciting is that you can find your place name, your pizza is from your country. Even though this is their selling point, we find it rather touching for a local kiwi business to incorporate other countries and places in their main product.

Jeremy and Talita are very sure about keeping everything very multicultural and multinational, so much so that even the staff working at both the branches are from different places, namely Brazil, India, New Zealand, Australian etc. “We are pretty international” as Talita says, and we absolutely agree to it.

Besides being just this, Calimero has something very local and community-driven spirit in their operations. While setting up their branch in Sandringham this Italian go-to place already has good relations with surrounding churches, tennis clubs, schools and not to forget various community interactive places.

The biggest challenge for them has been getting their name out in the market, and obviously, the biggest factor contributing to this is the pandemic that hit last year, right when they had started in Sandringham.

Despite that Calimero has earned their name in the community by serving free pizza's to various neighbouring organisations, clubs and schools. As Jeremy tells that it happened by accident, that they were taking pictures of various pizza's, instead of them getting wasted Talita walked up to a nearby school and consulted the authorities to see if they could let the kids have theirfood made with much needed love and care.

Like this they have tried their best to not waste food in the early days of setting up and have conducted these free pizza drives at various places. As the business name suggests there are surely noble, beautiful things happening besides making delicious pizza.

You cannot walk into Dominos or Macdonald and see the director of the company there while in Calimero you can spot them with the team and chat about what exactly you are looking for in your pizza and pasta.

When asked what message the duo have for the people reading this article “Firstly, we are very grateful for all the support that comes from our community for the last 30 years. It is amazing, a customer coming in is not just a customer but a friend. We would like your support for our local business, you support us, we support you, in the end, everyone wins and we have respect for each other.” said Talita and added that, “ We are very unique, we try to have a taste for everyone to make sure whoever walks in feels welcomed and loves our pizzas, we love what we do, when you do things with love you take care and you make sure you want the person to be happy.” - Vritti Parasher