Meal Ticket: Pizza Dozzina at The Twelve Hotel, Galway

The Twelve Hotel sits on the main crossroads of Barna, Co Galway. I’ve stayed here and, under the watchful eye of Managing Director Fergus O’Halloran, was beautifully looked after and impressed by the food in their gourmet restaurant Upstairs at West. I was visiting as part of a press trip back in 2012 to celebrate the christening of their new pizza oven in their deli Dozzina Pizza, a take-away pizza joint with a shared kitchen to The Pins Gastro Bar on the ground floor of the hotel.

On a recent trip back to Connemara, Pizza Dozzina proved to be the perfect late-night pitstop at the end of a long journey. The wood-fired stone oven that the house- made dough gets fired up in was brought in from Italy. O’Halloran went to Napoli to buy it and bring it back to Barna. They converted it to gas and rolled it into the deli part of the hotel. You can grab pizza to go from the Pizza Dozzina deli (all gourmet pizzas are €12 to take away) or sit down in The Pins Gastrob Bar. It’s tantalisingly fast and you can watch your pizza coming together through the kitchen pass.

The La Dozzina (€12.90) keeps things simple with buffalo mozzarella, parma ham, shavings of Parmesan topped with fresh, crunchy rocket. The locally inspired menu features local ingredients, such as the Connemara (€13.70) with its spiced lamb, sage and sesame seeds, served with a dollop of natural yogurt. The dough is exactly what you would expect from an Italian wood-fired oven; it’s deliciously blistered and blackened around its puffed up edges while the thin base acts as the perfect vessel for its assorted toppings.

If you’re heading to Spiddal or further into Connemara and don’t want to get swept into Galway’s traffic by eating in the city, keep Dozzine Pizza at The Twelve Hotel in Barna in mind.