Ethan Stowell's Ballard Pizza Company offers "whole pies and fat slices"
Been a while since Seattle saw this: giant Noo-Yawk style pizza pies, 20 inches across, baked on the hearth of a Baker's Pride double-stack "SuperDeck" oven. It's a slap in the face to those Neapolitan fops and their thin-crust, 800-degree, wood-fired contraptions that blast the toppings and burn the crust. Ballard's crust simultaneously crisp & chewy, toppings applied with restraint, full of flavor. And no one's asking you to eat a whole damn pie when all you want is a $3 slice.
Ballard Pizza Company is a welcome addition to Ballard Avenue's Restaurant Row (where it's getting harder to find parking than in Belltown). It's only a couple of blocks from the Kolstrand Building, where Ethan Stowell opened his Staple & Fancy Mercantile just 18 months ago. He also teamed with Kolstrand's owner, Chad Dale, to form a new venture, Grubb Brothers Productions, that intends to bring better quality to five classic American foods: sandwiches, fish & chips, fried chicken, burgers & hot dogs...and pizza.
Two of Stowell's longtime employees, Jim Seath and Michael Gifford, will head the pizzeria staff. Nothing fancy in the decor, but nothing cheap either, yet with what Stowell calls "approachable" prices. Beer, wine, cocktails, pasta (Stowell has a pasta-making operation in Belltown), freshly sliced prosciutto and mortadella, stromboli. Open until 3 AM Fridays & Saturdays. Delivery, too, starting in June.
I know, I know, two Ethan Stowell posts in a row. What can I say? When you're hot, you're hot.
Ballard Pizza Company, 5107 Ballard Ave. NW, 206-659-6033 
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