Friday, November 26, 2010

Impressions: Giannoni's

Giannoni's
2600 SW Barton St. #C3
Seattle, WA 98126
(206) 935-1800

My review of Giannoni's in West Seattle is up! Head on over to Slice to check it out.

[Photo: Adam Lindsley]

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Return to Serious Pie

Finally made it back to Serious Pie to give it a second chance after the first underwhelming visit. My brother joined me despite the pouring rain, and together we tackled six of the eight mini-pizzas available on the Happy Hour menu. My overall reaction? More positive than the first visit, absolutely. I still don't hesitate to say this is not great pizza, though. Not yet.


Some thoughts:

1.) The crust still bugs me. It tasted a lot better this time around than it did before, but the underside is still caked with a thick layer of flour and cornmeal, so that when it enters your mouth, it flakes off and forms a kind of mush on your tongue. So bizarre, and not pleasant.

2.) The Margherita this time was a hundred times better than the one I ate on my first visit. There was an ample amount of shredded parmesan on top to provide the saltiness that was missing from the first Margherita, and the sauce was heavily herbed, whereas the first Margherita's was a flavorless red paste.

3.) I enjoyed the sausage and peppers pie on my first visit, and once again, it was the pizza of the night. Great fennel-spiked sausage and peppers that deliver just a hint of heat.

4.) Pumpkin and squash are not idea pizza toppings. Both aren't particularly strong in the flavor department, and the mushy texture just felt wrong in my mouth. We tried two pizzas with these gourds, the pumpkin with pork belly and the delicate squash with roasted garlic. Both needed the addition of the second topping.

5.) The truffle cheese and roasted mushroom pizza was surprisingly sweet, and light on flavor. The sweetness came from the cheese, overpowering the mushrooms. Nothing memorable.

6.) The most interesting pizza of the evening was the guanciale, soft egg, and Beacon Hill arugula pie. The egg was cooked through, which I appreciated, as I don't particularly enjoy runny whites. Tasted great, too. Nice fresh arugula, slightly peppery. The pizzaiolo was pretty stingy with the guanciale, though. It really needed that pork flavor to tie the other two toppings together.

In conclusion, it appears that Serious Pie is like many other pizzerias, in that consistency varies greatly from one day to the next. My first visit here was a massive disappointment. My second visit...not totally redeeming, but a vast improvement. If they could cut down on the pantry-full of flour and cornmeal inundating the bottom of the crust, they'd be taking another huge step in the right direction.

I apologize in advance for the quality of the photographs below; they weren't taken with my usual camera, and we were seated in the very back corner of the restaurant, which was darker than a black steer's tookus on a moonless prairie night.

Truffle Cheese & Roasted Mushrooms; Margherita
Delicata Squash & Roasted Garlic; Pumpkin, Pistachios, & Pork Belly
Sausage & Roasted Peppers; Soft Egg, Arugula, & Guanciale


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Ristorante Picolinos - The Photos

Ristorante Picolinos
6415 32nd Ave NW
Seattle, WA 98107
(206) 781-8000

Hot off the presses: I am now the Seattle correspondent for Slice, the #1 pizza blog in the world and a site I often refer to here on This Is Pizza. I'll still contribute here from time to time (and I'll let you know via Twitter when I do), but the majority of my reviews will appear on Slice for the foreseeable future.

My first "professional" review? Ristorante Picolinos in the Ballard neighborhood. You can read the entire review over on Slice, but since they weren't able to use all of the photos I took, I'll display them for you right here.

All photographs by Adam Lindsley