Ash Wood Fired - Visit #7

 
     Ash Wood Fired is a food truck that serves small pies (10" inch) in the Base Camp Brewery pod. You may have seen Ash in Sellwood and the South Waterfront in prior years. They specialize in sourdough pizzas with fresh, seasonal ingredients and an always changing menu.

    You might be wondering why we would use one of our twenty-six visits on a food cart. After all, there are plenty of brick and mortar restaurants in Portland. Could a food truck really have the best pizza in Portland?  You bet your ass it could! For one, this is Portland, and I am constantly surprised at the many food carts pushing culinary limits in this town. Secondly, after trying Ash, we have a SERIOUS CONTENDER here! It's still early with many places left on our list, but this place is legit.

Margherita

      The cool thing about this location is the partnership with Base Camp Brewery. If you have ever been here, you know you can order from any of the food carts and eat inside the brewery. You can even order from inside the brewery as well.

      The smaller pie size is nice, it allowed us to order five pizzas without needing to be resuscitated after wolfing them down. Our partners joined us too, so it was a party of four (we don't love pizza enough to order five pies between two people).

       The first pie we tried...wait for it, wait for it...was the Margherita. If you have been following us at all this year, you know this will always been ordered. This wasn't the best pie of the night, but the crust stood out big time. Just look at the iPhone (barely edited) photo. This was the best crust we have tasted this year. It has it all. It is crispy, bubbly, perfectly chewy, and with the right amount of char. You can taste a subtle sourdough flavor as well as a slight buttery taste. The Margherita did miss the mark in terms of sauce though. I am not sure what kind of tomatoes they are using in their sauce, but on this pie they didn't hold up. I would be surprised if they were using something other than San Marzano tomatoes, which do the best with the high heat in a wood fired oven. Either way, we would have preferred more sauce and that the sauce be chunkier. I think this would improve the overall flavor and prevent the pie from being too dry.

Spring Veggie

     The Spring Veggie pie consists of red russian kale, green garlic, calcot onions, basil pesto, sheep feta, and fresh mozza. This pie blew us away! We will see how the ratings shake out at the end of the year, but this pie is a big reason we think Ash Wood Fired is a serious contender for best pizza in the city. This is the type of pie you wish you ordered two of! It is difficult to describe everything you taste with each bite. The slight sourdough of the crust, the olive oil base, the calcot onion, the garlic, basil, and cheese. I think they top each pie with some garlic butter as well. Your taste buds are like fireworks with every bite. Definitely get to Ash to try this one before it rotates off the menu.

Pepperoni

     I feel like writing about the Spring Veggie some more! Lol. We joked at the table that I'm becoming a vegetarian through this process. Increasingly, it seems as though my favorite pizza at each stop is the veg. We will see if that continues.

     The pepperoni was solid, but didn't leave me wanting more like the Spring Veggie. There wasn't anything particular wrong with it, however it lacked the flavor explosions of the veggie. My only critique was the sauce. Similar to the Marga, I prefer more punch with the sauce.

Meat

    This is the rotating meat pie on the menu. It had Olympia Provisions capicola, crispy shallots, gouda, and oregano oil. This was my least favorite pie of the night. Not terrible by any means, but disappointing compared to the others. I enjoyed the "caramelized onion" flavor of the crispy shallots and the capicola was quality. However, the crust wasn't as good (due to the bake). I would pass on ordering this again. 

Bianca

      The final pie of the night was the Bianca, made up of fresh ricotta, basil leaves, fresh mozza, and chili flakes. Everyone at the table enjoyed this, and it was probably the #2 pie of the night. We all agreed we would have enjoyed more chili flakes to give each bite a bit more flavor. Adding enough sea salt to taste would be a welcome addition as well. It was a solid pie, the ricotta was super fresh, and it was really light. It will be awesome for the upcoming nice weather. We just think it is a subtle tweak away from being a top tier pie.

Little Italiano

     This little beauty sits in the food truck. The deck is really small, but this sucker bakes well. It is impressive that they crank out so many pies out of this little guy.

All in all, Ash Wood Fired is definitely going to be up there in the final rankings this year. We will see how far up the list they land (maybe even win best pie) when the dust settles. It would be wild for a food cart to take down best pie of the year, but it is certainly possible in Portlandia.

Tomorrow (4/17) is the start of Portland Pizza Week. It is going to be a busy one for The Doughboys. Look for another blog post next week about Pizza Week.

Overall Rank: #2!