I was in the Tampa area over the weekend for my brothers wedding, so that made a trip to Peter Taylor's Wood Fired a must. I choose the original Tampa location because I wanted to try the pizza from the original oven designed to cook it. I don't have any pictures to show, I ended up there with some family which wasn't the original plan and complicated my usual process a bit, lol. Here's my take.
The Good: The crust. A star attraction. It was delicious, unique, well executed. Truly one of the best I've had.
The Rest: I don't want to call this the bad, because it is simply opinion, and the opinion of one guy at that. Peter's vision of his perfect pizza just didn't speak to me. It seemed almost convoluted to me. In my mind his crust was begging to be stretched out to 18", topped with a more heavily spiced new york style sauce and some dry mozz. The lean to a more Neapolitan topping style led to a pie that was out of balance to me. There is NOTHING neapolitan about the crust, it is crisp, airy and a medium brown. It overpowered the neapolitan style topping, yet could have stood up to so much more.
The staff while friendly, didn't seem to have any real sense of urgency. They moved with a fairly slow pace, and the few pies that were leaving the oven while I was there took an exceedingly long time to do so. They came right out and told use the place and the pies are different when Peter is there, calling him an artist. Maybe my feelings would be different about a pie he made himself, but I will say what I ate LOOKED just like their promotional material.
