Excerpt from: Taste of the Town / Nancy Leson

A New York critic sizes up Seattle pizza

By Nancy Leson
Seattle Times restaurant critic

Our next stop: Tutta Bella (4918 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle; 206-721-3501), one of a handful of U.S. pizzerias recognized by the Vera Pizza Napoletana — aka the "pizza police." VPN's strict adherence to the rigid rules of Neapolitan pizza-making are described in "A Slice of Heaven." At Tutta Bella, owner Joe Fugere personifies Levine's owner-occupied pizzeria theory: one that suggests that the best pizzerias are those run by people who "live and die with every pie."

"Look at the difference in style here," he says, of our thin-crusted Margherita, baked in less than two minutes in a searing wood-fueled oven — Levine's idea of the pizza ideal. He points out fresh basil and "discrete areas" of fresh mozzarella, and tomato sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes judiciously applied.

"In Seattle, we're seeing a burgeoning pizza culture," he says, tipping his hat to places like Tutta Bella, Via Tribunali (the new Neapolitan-style pizzeria in Capitol Hill), La Vita è Bella Pizzeria (in Belltown) and Café Lago (the Montlake trattoria where chef Jordi Viladas has been making great pizza for years). "If you've got a couple of guys using good ingredients, you'll eventually see more, and the end result is going to be good for Seattle.

"This is coming from the whole artisanal food movement here in Washington. You've got great cheeses, great local breads, and the same thing that's happened with cheese and bread is going to happen with pizza," Levine predicts. "You watch: In the next five years you're going to see an explosion of chefs opening pizza places. Seattle's such a good food town, I can't believe it can't be a great pizza town."

And pizza, says Levine, makes everybody happy. "Even bad pizza makes people happy. So why not eat good pizza? Think how happy that will make you!"