BY DAY: It’s Seastar Bakery, baker and purveyor of fancy toasts and baked goods with interesting flours and ingredients.
BY NIGHT: It’s Handsome Pizza, purveyor of wood-fired pizza. (And any pastries that happen to be leftover from the morning.)
By day/by night can be a tricky prospect to manage in the restaurant world; people think of a place as a coffee place or a bar, not both. But with the separate names and concepts, it’s easy for the old brain to enjoy Seastar’s bright and light space for an extended work session with the laptop in the morning, and then drop in in the evening for Handsome Pizza with the family.
So that’s what we did the other night.
Our go-to pizza is a simple mushroom and olive, but we decided to ride with the vegetarian special: the Nellie McAdams, with mozzarella, ricotta, arugula, capers, lemon, and garlic.
Some part of me, when I order a pizza like this, regrets the lack of tomato sauce that a “real” pizza has. I know, how pedestrian of that part. I can’t help it! I grew up eating the best of Beaverton’s Godfather’s and Roundtable pizza, and pretending to play video games because our parents never gave us quarters. (To be fair, we could have used our $1/week allowance, but I liked to save mine.)
The rest of me liked this pizza.
The toppings made for a lovely balance. When the ricotta threatened to make things a bit flat, the caper would some in with a briny punch. When the arugula seemed a bit grassy, in came the lemon.
The crust was blistered in spots, especially around the edges, but floppy enough that the first few bites were two-handers. And it had a distinctly sour tang — it was almost too sour for the delicate toppings. I noticed it even more the next day at 10pm, eating the last slice cold.
Yep, we had leftovers; We took home three of the eight big slices. So though our meal was about $38 before tip (roasted veggies, large pizza, and a beer), we got two meals out of it.
The seasonal veggie was roasted rutabaga and leeks in brown butter with mustard and Calabrian chile. It was very tasty, but how much rutabaga can one really eat in a sitting? If you have any ideas for how to use two-day-old roasted rutabaga, please let me know. But keep an eye out for seasonal salads; they seem to know what they’re doing with vegetables here.
If none of the pizzas on the menu board interest you, build your own with the usual suspects (garlic, onion, hot pepper, etc.) or less common toppings like za’atar, shallot, salsa verde, or… kale. Hey, it could be good!
Pizzas come in small or large. Small is close to personal size, and large could probably feed four reasonable people.
Eat in, or order pick up, or do as the neighbors seem to do, and order takeout. There were plenty of boxes flying out the door on our visit.
1603 NE Killingsworth St.
503-247-7499
handsomepizza.com
Have you been to Handsome Pizza? Did you go for a classic pie or something a little out there?
I have a tendency to trust bakeries that are putting out pizzas – You would think that they must know a thing or two about putting together a tasty crust! I’m with you though, I prefer the “traditional pizzas” with tomato sauce.
Yep, they know what they’re doing with that oven. And we could watch the guy working the oven from our table, too. Very cozy for February.
I adore a good pizza, and this place sounds on-point! I bet roasted rutabaga would be great in eggs/a quiche (although, I use up all my leftover veggies in eggs…haha).
A quiche was my first thought! Looks like it’s a quiche night at our house.
I absolutely love Handsome Pizza, and basically could live off of Seastar for the rest of my life and be happy. I really like thick crust pizza so this is right up my alley. Glad you finally made it over there!!
Do you think it’s thick? It’s not New York, that’s for sure. I had coffee and a pastry at Seastar once, and I do really like the space for working, especially on a winter day, when the windows let all that much-needed light in.
I’ve never been to Handsome Pizza but that really is a lot of rutabaga! I like the idea of using the leftovers in a quiche as well.
Well, I made my quiche crust, then went to get the rutabaga and… there was hardly any left. My husband had eaten most of it, unbeknownst to me. Problem solved, I guess! I chopped what was left, and it went well with spinach.
I’m with you, I usually gear towards a tomato based sauce. But that white pizza with ricotta sounded delicious!
It was!
A dual use restaurant/bakery, very cool! I don’t eat grains but I do appreciate creative menus and details!
If you ever found yourself there, you’d find yourself in good hands with the salads, if the rutabaga was any indication.
That’s so fun that they change and do pizza at night! I also love the idea of handsome pizza, haha! Not that I’m picky when it comes to pizza 🙂