First Impressions: Apizza @ Safeco Field

Apizza @ Safeco Field

1250 1st Ave S

Seattle, WA 98134

[Photograph by Adam Lindsley]

Modern Apizza is well known to pizza fanatics. The New Haven institution goes head-to-head with the two "big guns" in town: Pepe's and Sally's, and often comes out ahead. Its owner, Bill Pustari, recently opened a pizza concession stand in Seattle's Safeco Field, dropped the "Modern" and just called it Apizza. Last week I slipped in to try it.

The verdict? Pretty terrible. Still, it's early (they just opened a few weeks ago), so I've got my fingers crossed that Pustari will turn it around (please, please turn it around).

You can read my full write-up over on Slice.

Impressions: Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria

Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria
3601 S McClellan St
Seattle, WA 98144
(206) 760-3400

[Photograph by Adam Lindsley]

Breakfast pizza. Sounds crazy, right? Well it happens to be the best thing on the menu at Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. Thanks to the pureed Calabrian chiles serving as the sauce, this thing is a kick in the mouth. What makes it breakfast pizza? Pancetta and eggs, of course! Oh, and the crust tastes like Wonder Bread toast.

Want to learn more about the rest of the pizzas they serve? Check out the full review on Slice.

Impressions: Operacaffe

Operacaffe
835 4th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 234-6538

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

I recently took a trip to Mexico to see my girlfriend, Meghan, and on the way back to the airport in San Diego we stopped into a quaint little downtown Italian eatery called Operacaffe. As there was pizza on the menu, I naturally had to try some.

I'm not sure exactly where this Margherita ($10.95) is supposed to hail from, but Italy isn't it. It's cooked in a gas oven so that the rim of the crust gets some nice char, but the top and undercarriage are left merely golden brown. No matter if the crust tastes good, right? Well, unfortunately it was flavorless. It had a decently open crumb, so just a bit of salt in the dough would cure this problem in a jiffy.

Moving inward, the tomato sauce is a tad sweet, but more than that, barely detectable under the landfill of aged mozzarella. There was so much cheese weighing everything down that it was nigh impossible to extract a slice without three dozen strands of gooey, greasy mozzarella tethering it to the rest of the pizza. As it was aged mozzarella, and sodium-rich, it nearly made up for the blandness of the crust being squashed beneath it.

This is gut-bomb pizza, plain and simple, a bizarre, over-topped hybrid of Neapolitan and New York-style. It's not awful (I mean, how wrong can you go with lots of cheese?), but it's not strictly good, either. I won't write this place off completely, though, because my girlfriend's ziti was pretty tasty. Just don't order the pizza unless you want a little crust with your melted cheese. 

Or bring along an extremely attractive woman to distract you from the food, as I did.