Thursday, February 17, 2011

Willow Street Woodfired Pizza, San Jose

Willow Street Woodfired Pizza (Westgate)
San Jose, Ca

The Wife and I love food cooked in a wood fired oven, especially pizza. This process of cooking is fantastic! Our dream is to have a wood fired oven in our home so that we can cook dishes like baked lasagna, pizza and even bread. So it was with great anticipation and excitement, we visited Willow Street. We had seen this place in the Willow Glen area of San Jose and Los Gatos many times, but we hadn't gone. So for Valentine's day this year we finally went.

The prices are fair, it's not too pricey. There was a bar stocked with beer and wine, and the bartender was available to mix it up. Bar stools were there for patrons wanting to simply watch the game or enjoy a pizza and drink. This location at Willow Glen has hopes to be a sports bar, it even has specials for Sharks game days, home and away. The place has 5 or 6 screens each with a couple different games going on at the same time. Though it poses as a sports bars, I found the place to be friendly for family, as there were plenty of tables and even a patio for larger parties to enjoy their time.

Though I mentioned the prices to be fair, I was not talking about the appetizer we had ordered. The picture below, shows the Manila clams priced at $11 for this small bowl. There must've been 9 or 10 clams in this appy, I repeat..9 or 10...for $11?!? Something was not right here. I had to read the menu again, did I order oysters at a $1 a pop? Ummm..no!

After that let down we finally got to the pizza. What was nice was that there were 2 different pizza sections in the menu. One section was dedicated to regular pizzas and the other, thin crust. I like thin crust especially from a Woodfired oven. There's something about the thin dough bubbling up in reaction to the fire. We liked the toppings on one of the pizzas of the regular menu and we asked if we could make it thin-crusted. Our waiter said yes, and we were delighted. We ordered the Italian Sausage, Pancetta & Mixed Mushroom pizza with the Italian Thin Crust. It was a good pizza, but nothing to write home about. I enjoyed the mushroom medley the best, but what I was really looking forward to was the crust, and it just fell short.



If I was in the neighborhood and wanted pizza, I'd stop by but I wouldn't go out of my way to visit this place again. Thus giving it a rating of:

3 out of 5 Slices.





Willow Street Woodfired Pizza
1554 Saratoga Avenue
San Jose, CA 95129
408. 871. 0400 tel
http://www.willowstreet.com