Urban Walkabout staffer Fraser Tye trawls the streets of Sydney and shares his insider’s take on the pizza institution, Love Supreme, a place where he once worked – and importantly, it’s enigmatic owner, Bosko Vujovic.

I walked into Love Supreme and the first person I saw was Bosko. He was in the kitchen near the entrance. It was my first shift working there.

“Hey hey, Fraser is here! Woo woo woo!”

He was clapping madly. The phone rang and he answered.

“Hey hey, Fraser is here! Love Supreme wooohoo!”

(I don’t know why he was telling the person on the other end that I was there)

Bosko was wearing a blue t-shirt that tightly gripped his small potbelly. On the front read the words, “Love Supreme, Emotional Pizza for One and All,” which wrapped around a picture of an artichoke heart.

That night I delivered pizzas around Paddington on an electric bicycle. When I returned from each delivery he was pacing across the floor and kitchen, clapping for no particular reason, occasionally letting out a loud, “Wwwwoohoooo!”

I thought he belonged in a videogame. The man seemed more Super Mario than Mediterranean immigrant. Yet he was the restaurant’s founder and owner, and this was his heart and soul. He was Love Supreme’s gregarious chef who pioneered her pizzas. They had names like ‘LSD’ and ‘Tito’, named after Yugolsavia’s first president and revolutionary, Josip Broz Tito.

“What does the LSD pizza mean, Bosko?” I asked.

“Love Supreme Delight,” he replied, smiling.

I’m not sure how much cooking Bosko did that night. Then again, he didn’t need to. He was the lifeblood of the place and every customer was an opportunity to entertain and amuse.

“New delivery driver here, Fraser!” Pointing me out to a group of people at a table. He was smiling madly at me, “Verks for Urban Walkabout, came in, asked for job, now he’s here!” The confused customers could only smile. Why was he telling them this? I stood there awkwardly for a few moments. No one said anything.

“Oh.. what excitement!” Bosko said, smiling, breaking the silence.

Meanwhile, jazz music filled the room, coming from the speakers in the roof. It seemed fitting; Bosko was the embodiment of jazz. Passionate. Excited. Sweating. He was the Holy Idiot, whom everyone seemed to admire.

I looked around the dimly lit restaurant. There were boxes of ‘Organic Wild Rocket’ and ‘Biodynamic Pears’ neatly stacked on top of each other. On a bench was a red rotary dial telephone that wasn’t plugged into anything. At the back of the restaurant were bags of ‘Australian Stoneground Organic Flour’ that lay on top of an old weighing scale. My attention came to rest at a picture of a man staring intensely. Above him read the words, “A Love Supreme/John Coltrane”.

It was the final piece of the puzzle, the moment where all the chaos came neatly came together for me in this strange and lovely place.

Pay a visit to Love Supreme and check it out for yourself (180 Oxford Street, Paddington).

Twitter: @fraser_tye

*Appeared in Urban Walkabout, 8 April 2015