Welcome back, Pizzuto's
It's baaack!
Denizens of Seward Park and Lakewood know what I'm talking about: Their dear departed Pizzuto's, a neighborhood favorite that closed its doors a couple of years ago, has opened again in its old space — slightly gussied up but not so much as to mess with a good thing.
And Pizzuto's, make no mistake, is a very good thing. Franco and Vince Pizzuto opened the pizza-and-red-sauce roadhouse some 20 years ago, when the Rainier Valley and its environs were surging with new energy.
Enter the next generation of Pizzutos, weaned on marinara and cacciatore and eager to carry on the family biz — only not quite ready to buy when their elders were ready to sell. Cory Pizzuto and his wife, Jeni, moved up to Everett and opened a Pizzuto's there. The old Wilson Avenue address became a mediocre Italian restaurant named Fratelli's.
When that restaurant went under last year, Cory and Jeni unloaded the Everett place — and, in May, breathed new life into the original family enterprise.
In many ways it's like it never left. There's a carpet now, which soaks up a miraculous amount of the old clatter, and an air of new refinement contrasting with the merry family atmo of old. But they've kept the vinyl red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Prices, amazingly, haven't changed. (They're still just a little too high.) And families are still much in evidence, kids happily munching mini portions of their cheesy favorites — spaghetti and meatballs to tortellini alla Romano — while their weary soccer moms and dads guzzle Chianti and dig gratefully into platefuls of food that they didn't have to cook.
Which is the primary value of Pizzuto's, after all: The ease and convenience of a friendly "third place," where one enjoys a satisfying meal and runs invariably into some neighbor or other. Make no mistake: This food does not dazzle with splendor or nuance. But sometimes dependability and comfort are more important. It's not easy, after all, fitting splendor and nuance into that precious sliver of time between work and homework.
Hats off to the Pizzuto family, now in its third decade of knowing that.
Check please
Italian salad: One of the endearing/annoying things about Pizzuto's has always been the classy plasticware upon which the food arrives. Top of this line has to be the soup bowl, standard-issue school-cafeteria beige, in which you get your salad. There's nothing wrong with this basic starter toss — a mix-up of greens, carrots, herby croutons and homemade Roquefort dressing — but the bowl pretty much makes it taste like something out of Cleveland in 1965.
Rigatoni with marinara sauce: A fine, throaty marinara, tangy and sweet, is a pleasing surprise over fine al dente pasta, but better still are the accompaniments. The rolls you get with dinner, Gai's soft bake-and-serve, arrive warm from the oven. Soup or salad comes with each pasta dinner, and we chose soup: a deeply fragrant minestrone, thick with vegetables.
Combination pizza: I so adore the crispy, almost crackerlike crust at Pizzuto's it helped make up for the lack of savoir faire on top. The combo includes pepperoni, sausage pennies, sliced white mushrooms and canned black olives — plenty tasty for a family's needs, but pretty ho-hum considering. Next time I'll aim for the exotic cutting edge of Pizzuto's list — pesto sauce, sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts, believe it or not — and remember to invite someone conventional along.
Tiramisu: A journeyman tiramisu of the layered variety, heavy on the mascarpone and way too light on the liqueur. Aficionados will snort, but it provides a sweet fillip at the end of this savory meal, as well as a terrific excuse for a cup of Torrefazzione coffee.
Itemized bill, meal for two
Italian salad $2.95
Rigatoni with marinara sauce $10.95
Combination pizza $12.95
Tiramisu $5.00
Tax $2.80
Total $34.65
Kathryn Robinson: kathrynrobinson@speakeasy.net
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