The Park Bakery

The park bakery changed hands a few months back and the new owners have really revitalised the place, they’ve started doing a wider range of breads including sourdough some days and they’ve also started doing pizzas on a Friday and Saturday night cooked in the bread ovens. The pizzas are all 12inch and range in price from £8.50 for a Margherita up to £10.50 for the Piccante & BBQ Chicken pizzas.
What really sets their pizzas apart from your average takeaway pizza is the crispy base and crust from being cooked in the bread oven and the quality of the ingredients used for the toppings — the Piccante we ordered had Napoli sausage, fennel salami and «fior de latte» (proper Italian cows milk mozzarella). Between 4 of us we ordered 2 Piccante pizzas, a Hawaian and a Vesuvio (pepperoni and chilli) all were delicious.
The pizzas are takeaway only (no delivery currently) but the plus side of this is that I’ll burn off a few calories picking the pizzas up and you can also buy some bread for the morning and pick up some cakes for desert.
Very happy to see my local bakery breathing some much needed life back in to St. John’s lane!

Good local bakerfreshly made sandwiches and a good range overall.

It’s always heart warming to see thriving local bakeries. And The Park Bakery is most certainly thriving. The two times I’ve frequented the place, I’ve joined a short queue and inadvertently acquired some local gossip from chatty customers. The bakery sells a good selection of fresh loaves, although the scant range of cakes and pastries leave a lot to be desired. However, I’ve heard the Cheese Ploughmans lunch served here (circa £2.50) is delicious. Another of The Park Bakery’s assets is its opening hours. If you have an early start and live in the area, you’ll be pleased to know that the shop opens at 6am, and serves a range of breakfast rolls, teas and coffees to kick start that lethargic morning body.

I’m all for supporting your local business but this place is pretty rubbish. I popped in for a loaf recently and something for lunch. The loaf was fine but I opted for a sausage roll in the end and it wasn’t the best, too much pastry plus it was too thick and dry.
The service wasn’t too great either as the staff were too busy chatting to each other to acknowledge me. I even shouted bye as I left just to check I wasn’t imagining it, but even then they completely ignored me. Not worth the hike for this sort of service so I just stick to Tesco instead. A shame.