The Pizza Diaries: Biga Wood Fired Pizzeria

Hi friends! We’re back after a little blog break, thank you for being patient and for sticking around. We thought we’d kick things off by bringing you another installation of our Pizza Diaries series. For this stop, we traveled to Kirtland (yes all the way out there, it’s actually not that far) to check out Biga Wood Fired Pizzeria and let us tell you, it did not disappoint!

We had never heard of this place. Our friend Jen of Why Cle? and her husband Matthew (and son Jeffrey) are fans of this spot and it’s close to their home. They knew of our pizza journey and told us we had to try Biga. Kirtland is a few minutes from downtown Willoughby and only 30 minutes from where we live in Lakewood. Like we said before, we will travel for good pizza!

Jen grew up on the classic delivery chain pizza restaurants (probably like we all did). Actually, as a child she would have probably told you she didn’t like pizza very much. But as she grew up and had good pizza she realized she did in fact, enjoy pizza. She describes herself as a pizza apprentice. She is willing to try new things when it comes to pizza. Matthew describes himself as a pizza aficionado and for good reason. He spent some time in Naples, Italy where the real pizza is! Despite eating the best from the pizza capital of the world, he’s not a pizza snob and will not shy away from quick, delivery pizza. As a family, they probably eat pizza 3-4 times a month. Jen’s favorite type of pizza is sausage and mushroom, Matthew loves Italian style chicken pesto and Jeffrey loves the pizza from Pizzazz.

Big Wood Fired Pizzeria
Biga is located in Kirtland, Ohio. It’s in a very unassuming building with a cute dining room and sun room, which we ate in. They make the pizzas in a wood-fired stone pizza oven which you can clearly see, which is something we loved. It’s family owned and family friendly. The vibe is cozy and relaxed.

What We Ordered
The pizzas come one size and are on the smaller size which we liked so we could try a bunch. We ordered one app and a green, white and red pie. It was the right amount of pizza for 4 people.

• We started with the wood roasted broccolini
• Biga Pesto: homemade pesto sauce, roasted tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and mozzarella.
• The Ramp Special: ramp and bacon with a cream sauce.
• Cerino: house made sweet sausage, roasted artichokes, red sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil.
  

Sauce
We all agreed that sauce was not the focus on these pizzas and we liked it. None of us are big sauce people so we enjoyed that there was not a lot of sauce of the pizzas. Matthew thought the sauce was well balanced and we were able to focus on tasting all the toppings. Beard thought the pesto pizza was a little greasy but still delicious.

Crust
We all thought the crust was light and chewy which most of us enjoyed very much. Broad is not a huge crust eater but will eat a little bit and this is the type of crust she likes. Beard said his mouth eventually got tired from chewing through all the crust but he enjoyed the taste. We all liked that there was not a lot of crust on the pizzas. None of us are really crust-focused pizza eaters.

Toppings
The toppings on the pizzas were so fresh and full of flavor. Jen loved the sweet sausage on the Cerino best. Matthew liked how the basil leaves weren’t charred like what usually happens on so many pizzas. We all seemed to agree the Cerino was the best pizza. We thought the Pesto pizza could have used something else on it. The ramps were delicious as well but that pizza seemed to be overwhelmed by the bacon.

Cheese
Jen said the cheese was perfectly balanced on the pizzas and it wasn’t to cheesy. We all loved having the table cheese grater so we could grate our own cheese. We may or may not have gone overboard with the grating. Broad likes her pizzas SUPER cheesy so she could have used more cheese but we understand why they made the pizzas the way they did. They really want to focus on the fresh toppings.

Overall Experience
We loved that you get the vibe that it’s a family run restaurant and that it’s family friendly. We also loved that we could see the pizza being made. Our server was excellent and very attentive. They actually dropped one of our pizzas and apologized profusely for it. It only took them a few minutes to bring out the new one.

Next Day Deliciousness
We didn’t have any pizza to take home the next day which is definitely a good sign. But Jen and Matthew have had it the next day. They said the key is you have to heat it the right way, in the oven and not in the microwave. That’s usually the case with these types of pizzas.

Overall Rating
4.25 cheese graters. We loved the environment and the pizza sizes, but maybe they could offer some other sizes for larger groups who would want to eat the same type of pizza.  Jen and Matthew said it also could get pretty busy, the place is on the smaller side so that could be an issue if you’re hungry and had to wait. If we found ourselves in this area again, we would definitely stop by and try some different pizzas.