After a lot of deliberation for this month’s restaurant, we were convinced to dine at the local family-owned restaurant, Black Bird Woodfire! The restaurant opened in the first half of 2014 just on Broadway. This isn’t a normal pizza place though: they use a woodfire oven, called Bertha, to cook their hand-stretched dough. Bertha was imported from the pizza motherland – Italy herself. Blackbird is famous for their delicious food, gaining a visit from Guy Fieri himself a few years ago and just now winning “Best Pizza in Red River Valley” in 2022. If that isn’t enough to grab your attention, then we’re not sure what will.
We decided to start off with a classic appetizer that everybody loves and is almost impossible to mess up: Cheesy bread. This garlic cheesy goodness was exactly what we were craving, especially as #1 cheesy bread fans. This definitely met our expectations. The woodfire aspect is another thing that adds a unique taste to the cheesy bread, which is incomparable to places that do not use a woodfire oven. What really surprised us, though, was how delicious the marinara sauce was. It was slightly sweet and honestly pairs very well with the cheese and the garlic. This was an amazing start to our review and we rate it a 4.5/5.
For our main course, there are a wide variety of options, especially with the pizzas being entirely customizable, so it was very difficult to choose. After a long time deciding and discussing it during the school day prior (instead of doing our school work in western civilization), we ended up with a classic pie and a hidden off-of-the-menu pizza to devour. We ordered the Hot Chica first, which consists of red tomato sauce topped with fresh mozzarella and pepperoni and garnished with basil and (surprisingly) hot honey. These flavors combine extremely well, and the greasy pepperoni, the fresh herbs, and the sweet-hot honey make a perfect balance. Atari still thinks about this pizza sometimes, and while it is off of the menu we still hear people talk about it constantly. We’ve also heard about how tasty their crust is, and as somebody who isn’t a pizza crust fan we do admit it is very yum yum in the tum tum. Overall, this pizza deserves a 4.5/5.
Next, we got the Lumberjack pizza, another creative combination. The Lumberjack is made up of Bechamel cream sauce, mozzarella, red onion, Canadian bacon, regular smoked bacon, and toppings of maple syrup and a sunny side egg. This is one of the pizzas featured on their menu and we have heard it is a fan favorite. We really like this combination. It reminds us of a breakfast pizza, especially with the bacon and eggs. It also maintained the balance of flavors that we experienced with the last pizza, the maple syrup being the sweet factor this time. Atari loves a good breakfast pizza, and this fills that role very well while still being something that you can enjoy any time of the day. While the taste of the pizza was very nice, it was extremely filling and almost impossible to have by yourself. It was also very hard to get the pieces apart because the pizza cutters are very dull, which is why overall we would have to rate it a 3.5/5.
To end this review we obviously needed to have some sweet desserts. While Black Bird is known for pizza and woodfire, we wanted to test them and see if they can excel in the dessert department too. The desserts are made by a designated baking employee and then kept in the cooler where they can be heated up in Bertha (unless it’s a cheesecake) and be given to customers. This week’s special was a brownie topped with delicious caramel syrup and whipped cream. The brownie was very crumbly and moist, and unlike some other restaurants’ frozen brownies, these have heart and soul. We would have no choice but to rate it a solid 4/5 spartan heads.
This visit to Black Bird Woodfire has been a very pleasant time and overall a great place to sit and dine with family and friends. We would love to go again and try more of their menu in our spare time to get the full Black Bird experience. As a group, we collectively give this amazing restaurant a rating of 4.5/5.