All Ashore! Driftwood Oven Lands A Permanent Home

The popular mobile pizza operation settles down in Lawrenceville this winter.

Photo by hal b. klein

For the past two years, Neil Blazin and Justin Vetter have trucked Driftwood Oven, their wood-fired pizza business, around town to breweries, coffee shops and special events to serve their naturally leavened pizza. Now, they’re ready to settle down.

“We just got the keys the other day. The timing is right,” says Blazin, the operations’s head baker.

Fans of Driftwood Oven pizza — count me, enthusiastically, among them — should prepare themselves for a shift in pizza styles. The pizza at Driftwood will be cooked in a gas oven, which fires at a significantly lower temperature than a wood-fired one. So although the dough still will begin with Blazin’s signature sourdough base, he and Vetter are going to serve “Grandma” style square pies and 16-inch, gas-oven style round pies. Everything will be available by the slice.

Driftwood also will serve traditional pizza-house accompaniments such as garlic knots and housemade salads, as well as desserts. Other than that, don’t expect a lot of frills.

“We enjoy the simplicity of Driftwood Oven and want to maintain the feel of that. We plan to be more a pizzeria than a full-service restaurant,” Blazin says.

Sounds good to me.

Expect a soft-opening for Driftwood Oven’s Lower Lawrenceville brick-and-mortar location in mid-January, with a full opening following once its liquor license is approved.