Serving up a slice of Italy at Ipswich Waterfront

Ipswich Star: The Upper Deck at Isaacs over Ipswich Maritime Festival weekend 2015The Upper Deck at Isaacs over Ipswich Maritime Festival weekend 2015 (Image: Archant)

Fast food doesn’t have to mean dull and boring.

It can also be great quality.

The latest stage of development at Isaacs on the Quay, at Ipswich Waterfront has produce a new balcony, overlooking the marina, a barbecue area and a new pizza restaurant.

The pizza restaurant, Pizza Al Taglio, has been developed by Isaacs operations manager Mandy Stafford, who told me all about it.

“It is all about good food. The freshness and the taste and look of everything is important,” she said.

“Everything is produced fresh here daily, including the dough and the salads and dressings.”

The aim was to make everything authentic.

Pizza Al Taglio is Italian for pizza by the slice, she said, and was invented in Rome.

It is a variety of pizza baked in large rectangular trays, and sold in rectangular or square slices.

Mandy said: “It is a popular casual food, where for many years it has become a way of life for people - to grab a quick snack or a meal on the go. It is often eaten as a takeaway dish.

“The concept is similar to fast food or as we like to say, good food fast.”

Originally there would have been wood-fired ovens but in recent times they had been replaced by reliable electric ovens, such as those now used at Isaacs.

They had opened with a choice of ten varieties of pizza on the main menu, she said.

The dough base was part-baked, she explained, and then topped with ingredients. Slices could be cooked in minutes for customers.

They range from a margherita to a seafood pizza.

“We also have additional speciality pizzas. One of the latest is Pollo di Peperonchino Dolce - translated as sweet chilli chickent.”

We sat and had a coffee overlooking the marina, safely out of the wind on a blustery day.

Mandy said: “This is a really exciting development.

“We are already getting brilliant feedback and people are saying it is a nice addition to the Waterfront.

“It is lovely here.

“We have a lovely setting.

“I was here the other evening, and the sun was just setting, having pizza and Italian wine.

“You could have been at Lake Garda, overlooking the boats.

“You can have an Italian beer if you want to,”#

This front corner of the complex was once The Wherry Inn, apparently, so would have been a regular haunt for drinkers, if not diners.

Now it is linked to the rest of Isaacs.

The new building links the existing quayside buildings, and includes a lower deck and an upper deck.

Marcella McGovern, events managers, said: “We had a Winston Churchill impersonator on the top deck on Maritime Festival weekend, and it was great fun.

“He was talking to the crowds as they stopped too.”

The development work, began with steel pilings at the beginning of the year, with the main construction work from March.

Mandy added: “We used a lot of local contractors, including a lot of people who had worked at Isaacs before. They were really pleased to be working on this local project.”