via tribunali

this spot is one link in a seattle mini-chain. neapolitan style is their game—wood-burning oven, buffalo mozz, "pomodoro", and all.

via tribunali, a story in pictures:

readers of seattle weekly like this place (it may help that there are multiple locations, allowing for more readers to have a convenient location to sample).

there are roughly two dozen pizzas on the menu. it made for a lot of hemming and hawing. we had nearly a half-a-dozen visits from our waiter before we were able to divulge our preferences. to be fair, i copped-out and settled on the margherita (non-d.o.c. version), leaving the really hard choosing up to ian & jenn.

the results were pretty standard neapolitan. über-thin crust, a sauce made of what seemed to be naked, canned tomatoes; fior di latte; and a dabbing of basil.

the charring speaks for itself, but the edge was described by ian as spongy and i concur. pretty good flavor tough. tasted like fresh baked bread, so they were doing something right.

the highlight for me was the cherry tomato, arugula, grana, and prociutto pie. the arugula was infantile and did not have the bitterness or peppery kick sometimes associated with older leaves. the prociutto was cut remarkably thin and kid of melted in my mouth. the cherry tomatoes played the sweet card and supplemented the saltiness of the prociutto and grana nicely.

maybe the best thing about this place is the neighborhood. when we tried parking in front of someone's house we mistook an inquisitive look from the homeowner for the hairy eyeball. turns out the guy was just checking out the oregon plates on the car. he was a chatty native american fellow who'd lived in portland for a while. he knows a couple of the people who own shops in the revitalized area down the street, which is where our pizzeria of note lies.

that block of shops is like a super concentrated greenpoint, brooklyn. hipster-punk central. lots of bikes, skinny jeans, and at least one tricked out woman sporting an 18" pink mohawk with leopard spots buzzed into the sides of her head. around the corner from via tribunali is the fantagraphics bookstore, a record shop featuring soul music, a cycle shop, a couple of bars, a café, a button-maker rental shop, a letterpress office, and a mo-ped shop. this is all surrounded by a neighborhood filled with auto-repair garages, and a giant boeing complex. the falafel truck was down the block.