There was a pizza place on Capitol Hill where the servers were very serious and pretentious about their pizza, which is a somewhat laughable pose in Seattle, but probably necessary to make it clear that they aren’t just a place for drunk people to congregate. “This is traditional, Naples-style pizza,” they said. “It cooks in about one minute. We don’t slice it, and there is a reason for that.” One of the songs in the Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park With George begins by listing the words you need to create a painting: “Order. Design. Composition. Tone. Form. Symmetry. Balance.” Similarly, in a pizza you need cheese, sauce, crust, accompaniments, calibrating each so they blend into one. It isn’t often that I have a pizza, or anything, really, where the toppings don’t feel a bit separate from the main dish they accompany; where instead of a single flavor there are two or more that don’t come together in a whole that surpasses its parts. Yet they managed it here. They are so confident in their crust, which is tender without being soft, that for dessert they give you a giant pizza crust shaped like a croissant and filled with nutella. I could eat four of them.
(Photo: Skyline from the water taxi, Seattle.)
365 Days of Food 