The smoky scent of the wood-fired pizza oven, heavy with the smell of oak, is the first thing that greets you when you walk into the restaurant. You may even end up staying longer than you should just to enjoy the smell of the burning wood. When you pick up the menu you’re bound to be spoilt for choice. One menu is filled with the usual pizza choices, the classics that you’d expect at any pizza spot worthy of the name. The other menu is filled with specials that have been made from long-fermented dough.
One starter you can’t go wrong with is the plate of puffy doughballs that come with a soft garlic butter that’s adorned with fresh parsley. You can also try out the homemade tomato salsa which comes with green and black olives plus truffle oil, tapenades and homemade bread. The tapenades’’ salty bitterness is complemented well by the sundried tomatoes’ sweetness and each of the two is the right balance of creamy, earthy and pungent.
The bowl of linguine that comes in a source made from garlic, cream and white wine and also filled with large chicken chunks makes for a fairly decent main course. The pasta and the sauce was a match made in heaven or maybe a kitchen in heaven.
Obviously, a pizza was bound to feature in the conversation at some point. The pizza here is large and thin-crisped and that charred flavour everyone enjoys. The topping of bright tomato sauce, mozzarella, excellent pancetta, coppa and a good amount of herbs is exactly what the pizza needs. The use of real pancetta gives the pizza a tasty herbal dimension. But before you fill up, be sure to leave room for the pudding.
For pudding, some of your choices include a delicious chocolate filled mini calzone which is served with a chocolate sauce or cream. You can also sink your teeth into a tasty lemon polenta cake. Unlike the usual mushy mess you get when you order a polenta cake in many places, the cakes here have a proper structure and the lemon drizzle is served as a sauce and not poured on top of the whole thing. There are also many drinks to choose from, one of the reasons why it was named CAMRA’s Mid-Anglian Pub of the Year for 2017.