Bar del Corso: Perfect Pizza
Beacon Hill’s beloved new eatery features the best margherita pizza in Seattle.
By Seattle Mag November 22, 2011
This article originally appeared in the December 2011 issue of Seattle magazine.
First things first: This place makes the best margherita pizza in Seattle. Its chewy crust is spread with a luscious, almost creamy tomato sauce and milky-soft mozzarella melting softly on top, with basil strewn about ($9).
It’s really no mystery when you know the back story: Chef Jerry Corso built a pizza oven in his Beacon Hill backyard and spent a year perfecting his crusts, working out the kinks and hosting fundraisers so that one day, he and partner Gina Tollentino Corso could make their dream restaurant a reality on Beacon Hill, not exactly a destination for Italian food.
Or rather, it didn’t used to be.
Now, lines flow out the door and onto the sidewalk: young families, groups of friends, neighbors too tired to cook and hungry for the gooey-cheese-centered fried risotto balls ($5), or daily specials like the char-grilled octopus on firm borlotti beans ($9) in a pool of the outstanding tomato sauce drizzled with grassy olive oil (bonus: the leftover sauce is ideal for dipping pizza crust).
Small plates, such as the tender meatballs ($7) and the sautéed clams ($7.50), are remarkably good in their own right, but the pizza here is supremely good. That margherita is hard to pass by ($9), but a perfect puttanesca pizza hits all the salty-spicy high notes ($12.50).
Yet even more than the pizza, it’s the feel of the place—the room-spanning bar, where regulars pop in for pizza and a beer, the high ceilings, the wood-framed picture windows, but mostly the particularly delicious flavor of neighborliness that happens when a great restaurant opens in an underserved neighborhood—that’s such a triumph for the neighborhood. Eat there and you’ll take a little of that “happy” home with you. I know I did.
Dinner Tue.–Sat. Beacon Hill, 3057 Beacon Ave. S; 206.395.2069; bardelcorso.com $$