A week or two ago I posted up about a local Italian in Wakefield and how I was looking forward to going there because they had a wood burning oven. Well; I’ve been. This is a tough review because I built my hopes up and while they weren’t dashed, and we did have a good evening in there, I can’t help but feel the pizzas could have been better.
I’m getting picky now though, and I don’t think many people would agree with me but I’m not many people. I’m also really picky but only in a sense that I strive to do better.
Let’s see: Service was very good. My wife had let the cat out the bag when she booked and told them that her husband had a wood burning oven. When we were seated, we had a table with a good view of the oven… I gotta admit… oven envy crept in. The manager comes over and I can’t help myself and I started asking questions about the oven, flour and so on… he knew his stuff and was more than happy to chat away. Knowing I was going to order a pizza, I took the odd step of ordering a garlic bread to share – 2 lots of bread… well I needed to review it so it gave me 2 bites of the cherry / pizza. The other members of staff were equally friendly and chatty.
I’d watched the pizza guy rolling the dough and using a rolling pin to get the shape then finishing by hand. They were super thin bases so I was expecting a goodly amount of charring on the base. And I’ve got straight to the point there… when it arrived there was very little charring underneath and the tomato & garlic topping was sparse.. almost to the point of looking dry. I’d have spruced that up with a spiral of olive oil but that’s another matter. Still nice, and folks, keep bearing in mind that my criticism could easily be your praise – it was still nice tasting, the tomato had a good flavour and the chopped basil in there looked & tasted fresh. Before I continue – those of you feeling sorry for Mrs Pizzageek right now… don’t. She knows what I’m like and I don’t drag her out of the house to review pizzas and talk about pizzas or flour, bases, charring, ovens, peels or anything… wait… nope, I was wrong, that’s exactly what I do. She must love me. Outcome: Garlic bread with tomato: 7/10 – would have been 8/10 with charring and 9/10 with more topping.
Main course and I went for the chicken & rosemary pizza… and there was a hint of lemon in there too. Topping-wise this was marvellous. The chicken was fresh and not dried out by the oven, and I’ve never used rosemary on a pizza but I’m sure I will do soon – it was really tasty. The cheese was good too – everything made for a nearly-perfect pizza except for the base – not charred. This means the pizza cuts more like a strong crepe – great taste, I just like that extra bit of charry taste to come through. I’ll put this back into perspective – when I use our oven I find it difficult to get this right and when I use the gas oven it’s nigh on impossible even after leaving the oven on for an hour at full blast with the stone in the top. When I have got it right in the wood-fired oven it’s been very difficult not to destroy the edge closest to the fire. What this means is I’m being uber-critical and this shouldn’t put you off going. Pud was nice, house red was nice and coffee was nice and the price was pretty good too.
Pretty pleasant pizzas praised by a pretty picky person.
