The Woodyard, just across from the Tide Mill, is a buzzing venue that serves up delicious pizza in Woodbridge. They describe their pizza offering as “contemporary Neapolitan style“, and the menu certainly looked tempting. With the outdoor seating area pretty much full, it suggested the food was worth trying.
On a sunny spring day, it’s not surprising that most diners chose to sit outside this Deben Wharf eatery. We didn’t mind sitting inside to get the child out of the sun for an hour or so!
The place has a very much industrial vibe inside. A well-stocked bar takes up one wall. Here, the regular clatter of cocktail shakers suggested that many diners were celebrating the return of the sunshine in style.
Our table at the back gave us the perfect view of the pizza chef hard at work.
The Woodyard’s head chef prepares his pizza dough on site every day. By importing many of their ingredients from Italy, they’re clearly aiming to deliver on both quality and flavour.
When it comes to the menu, the pizzas are clearly the star of the show. There are a few starters and sharers on offer, though, plus desserts. At lunchtimes, you can order filled fresh bagels for £8 each.
We liked the fact that there’s no set kids’ menu. Instead, children can order a 7″ cheese and tomato pizza with three additional toppings of their choice for just £7.
For our son, these three toppings were tuna, sweetcorn and capers – solid choices! He was impressed with the quantity of toppings, and equally impressed – if not more so – by the arrival of his own pizza wheel.
While I didn’t personally try his pizza, he told us it was delicious – including those beautifully puffy crusts.
Meanwhile, we both went for the Smokey Joe (£16) – a new addition to the menu at the time. The combination of a ragu base, provola smoked cheese, rosemary potatoes, pancetta, rosemary, crispy onions and hot honey was too tempting to pass up…
Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? And I can confirm that it lived up to expectations. We were a little disappointed that the ragu base didn’t materialise. The tomatoes served instead, though, were fresh-flavoured and delicious (and the menu has since been updated listing tomatoes as the base). The chef was generous with the smoked cheese, and those little cubes of tender herb-spiked potato added a great pop of flavour.
The pancetta and crispy onions added a lovely dimension – both texturally and in terms of flavour – and that hot honey drizzled over the top was the perfect finishing touch.
We also need a moment to appreciate those crusts: light, puffy and full of flavour. They were fantastic on their own, but even better still dunked into a pot of The Woodyard’s incredible gorgonzola dip (£1).
Service throughout our meal was fantastic, and I regret not having the space to order a portion of their homemade tiramisu for dessert. Maybe next time…when we’re next after pizza in Woodbridge, I know where we’ll be going!