Wicked Pie

The rule at the door is the first thing to know. Wicked Pie is twenty one and over, and children are not admitted at all. The owners put it plainly on their own site, which promises no crying children, no little league parties and no high chairs. Take that as a warning or as an invitation.

The family says it is three generations of pizza makers working from fifty years of recipes. The grandfather came over from Rome at the urging of the Seattle restaurateur Vic Rosellini, cooked in Rosellini's kitchen for a decade, then saved until he could open a place of his own. The Andersons run this one, in a downtown building whose 1900s brick and original tin ceiling have both been brought back.

Dough is made daily and thrown by hand, the sauce is the grandfather's, and the mozzarella is fresh whole milk. MIGS with one G carries barbecue chicken, bacon, pineapple, red onion and cilantro, and sends a fifth of its takings to an animal rescue. The house bloody mary arrives garnished with a slice of pizza and a stick of pepperoni.