Serious Pie

Sometime between the times he defeated the Spanish Armada and when he became Emperor of Seattle, Tom Douglas decided to get Serious about Neapolitan pizza. The results sure surprised the heck out of me…
As a recovering Elite Unilocaler, it was impossible for me to ignore the buzz about Serious Pie, but the first half dozen times I came to Seattle, I refused to check their Belltown location out despite how close it was to the downtown hotels I usually stay in — it was just too damn cramped, busy, and overly-​hyped. Then, my Unilocal bud «Brotha» Earl G. got my attention with a five star review of the new Capital Hill location. Unlike most of us, Earl writes five star reviews about as often as Donald Trump says nice things about Jeb Bush; when he deems a venue worthy of five star accolades, it always gets my attention. After I Grokked his 411, I resolved to head to Capital Hill on my next trip to Seattle.
Drafting my Pasta-​crazed Compadre to ride shotgun, we arrived at the Starbucks that contains this link of the Serious Pie location at the best time to partake — during HH! Like most of Tom Douglas’ restaurants, Serious Pie normally tends to overcharge for their food, but their HH value proposition completely levels the playing field; you get half-​sized Neapolitan pizzas for just $ 6, which is only about ¹⁄₃ of the regular price!
Good prices can only take you so far; the only reason to eat at one of Tom Douglas’ venues is the quality of the food, and on this front Serious Pie does NOT disappoint!
What makes or breaks any pizza, especially Neapolitan-​style, is the flavor and texture of the dough. Serious Pie’s dough is substantial without being too thick, sufficiently chewy with more than a touch of blistered crunchiness, and wonderfully flavorful. Add to that the fact that the toppings are fresh, generous, and premium, and then noting that the combinations offered are creative and satisfying, I must reluctantly concur with Earl’s assessment — this is decidedly a five star pizza joint!
Over and above the delicious pizzas and the warm, vibrant, uniquely interesting venue, corkage is only $ 15 a bottle; life is good, and I’ll be back when next I’m in the mood for Neapolitan-​style pizza in the Emerald City :-)

The good:
— Great food
— interesting location in Starbucks Reserve Roastery
The bad:
— Location means parking is difficult to find
— Kind of pricey
While the wife and I were checking out Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room, we decided to checkout Serious Pie because it’s right there, we’ve heard great things about it, and it’s by Tom Douglas! So why not?
The restaurant is «open» to the Roastery, though it has it’s own dedicated seating area. The service here was ok. Our host/​server wasn’t friendly at all, but she wasn’t actively rude or slow, so whatever.
As far as food goes, we ordered the bruschetta (changes seasonally) with stracciatella, fig mostarda, pomegranate, and olive oil. It was a delicious crunchy, creamy, sweet, savory, fruity, dish that we’d definitely order again. For our pie, we ordered the Penn Cove Clam Pie, pancetta tesa, lemon thyme, parmesan. Honestly, we had mixed feelings about this pie. We could tell the crust was AMAZING! The pancetta, thyme and parmesan went really well together, and we didn’t even miss having a sauce. The clams were a little too briny for us and had quite a bit of sand. Basically we liked this pie, save for the clam portion, though I thought it was a little too spicy. But hey, everyone has a different tolerance.
For a single soft drink, a bruschetta and pizza, we ended up spending almost $ 50… Not cheap for sure, though not the worst value ever.
Despite the hiccups I’d definitely go to Serious Pie again. I really want to try their other pies and menu items, I just won’t be ordering the clam pie again.

I stopped in with the idea of getting a Starbucks coffee and a little bit of the «serious pie» that Starbucks was offering… The Starbucks greeter set me straight: Serious Pie is an independent establishment that shares space with the roastery and tasting room. Well, OK.
I decided to sit down by myself at a Serious Pie table to try a pie. A split second after making my decision, I encountered three colleagues who were coming for lunch — we made a table of four.
My pizza — a soft egg pie — was really quite good. Ting L. offered me a slice of a her pizza with cheese and tomato sauce; I liked this one as well.
The service was A-​OK. Serious Pie isn’t cheap, but it’s not outrageously priced either. I’m glad I stopped by and would be happy to return.

Review number 100! Woot! There are a few Serious Pie locations, this ones not my favorite. But it’s still good pizza! The long and short of it:
1. Pizza. The crust on their pizzas is spot on. It’s crispy, but still holds the pizza together. Their selection involves everything from odd (pear and pancetta) to more normal pizzas. They switch up the menu often, and have a few seasonal pizzas. The fennel sausage is my favorite so far.
2. Location. This particular Serious Pie is located in a Starbucks Reserve, so the constant movement of people makes it feel like you’re eating in an upscale mall food court. Not my preferred arrangement but others might not mind it as much.
3. Portions. Each pizza is only large enough for 1 person, unless you’re not very hungry. You may go home with a small slice or 2, but 1 pie is not big enough to split.
4. Price. I know the ingredients are fresh, but the price per pizza, $ 18-​$ 20, is too high. That’s around what if expect to pay for a pie that’s large enough to split, not a serving for 1.
The food is good, but not good enough to warrant the price in my opinion. Still, if you’re willing to shell out, Serious Pie is worth the trip, especially to one of their stand alone locations.
Overall Grade: C+

Went for my first time during my visitation at the Starbucks Roastery on 10÷27÷15
I love the pizza here! A lot of pizza selections on their menu are very unique. Me and my girl ordered one… I forgot the name. it was the one that had egg and vegetable on it. I know it wasn’t the top notch selection but we wanted to try something different and I mean. where else do you find egg on the pizza you know? I actually enjoyed it a lot. The salami on there had really good flavor that goes along well with sweet and sour flavored-​vegetable dressing. I wish I know what those things called so I can describe better. Although I enjoyed my pizza a lot, but I will probably get something else next time. The price was reasonable for $$. It filled 2 people up quite well, especially on a date.
We also got a dessert. the first one. Something chocolate over chocolate… etc. lol. I feel so bad for not remembering any of these names… HOWEVER, I want to say that dish was one of the best desserts I ever had for a while! The balance of all chocolate flavors was on point. Every bite I took, I could taste all different types of flavors flying together in my mouth. I would love to go back here mainly for that dessert dish. I took a pic I think. I will try to post it on here ASAP.
The only thing that was suck was our service. I feel like they were understaffed for how busy the place was. We waited forever for everything. The only nice thing about it was that the server cleaned the table for us between entrée and dessert. Overall, it was a nice experience though. Like I said, increase the amount of server at busy time!

Love this pizza place because of its authenticity. The dough just tastes so natural, and the taste is a combination that is so addicting. We ordered the mushroom pizza, the clam pizza, and the buffalo mozzarella one.
My personal favorite was the clam pizza, and it keeps getting better as you eat it! The only down side of the pizzas were the burnt bubbles that weren’t very edible, but that was weighed out by the deliciousness.
Definitely recommend!

I would give this a million stars if I could. What made this place so amazing, besides its super hipster atmosphere, is the servers were extremely sweet. Being lactose intolerant, I try to avoid pizza like the plague, but my friends really wanted to dine here. I ended up ordering the soft egg but with no cheese, but they unfortately forgot to make it without cheese. The server realizing that there was cheese on my pizza while handing out the pizzas told me they would make another asap, and even though I had to wait 10ish minutes while my friends chowed down, they ended up giving my pizza on the house. How rad is that! The pizza itself was pretty good, but my experience with how they respected my allergen was beyond anything I ever experienced.

I’be been to the other Serious Pie location and I feel like it was better service over there.
So we went to this one because of how close it was and usually there aren’t too many people in there, I guess I can guess why.
We had the calamari to share. Not sure how to describe it. This one is stir fried with a handful of salad greens and a rich sauce. It’s hard to imagine this kind of dish in a pizza place.
I shared the truffle mushroom pizza with added fennel sausage. The flavors are good, but not $ 18 for a pizza slightly larger than a personal sized pizza.
Service — she was nice, but just never came back and checked up on us. Just dropped off food and did her own thing.
Definitely go to the other Serious Pie location and do the happy hour. You actually get personal sized pizza for way less, I think maybe half off? Not sure, but happy hour is the way to go!

YUM my mouth is watering just thinking about these seriously delicious pies. I haven’t been to the other locations before, but this one is located in the same building as the Starbucks Reserve Roasting and Tasting room, so just go through that front door and you’ll find Serious Pie on the right side.
For the 4 of us, we ordered 3 pies with no apps or desserts and it was a good amount of food as each pizza isn’t the biggest pizza ever. We ordered the truffle mushroom pizza, sweet fennel sausage, and prosciutto pizza. All were really good and I can’t get over how good and fluffy the crusts were. My favorite was the prosciutto pizza which also had arugula, pecorino, and soft scrambled eggs baked into the pie. Soooo good and the textures were just so perfect.
The 3 pies and 3 glasses of wine we ordered came out to just about $ 100 after tax and tip, so not your cheapest meal but definitely not expensive either.

Food: 4
Drinks: 3
Ambiance: 3
Had a late lunch here on a Sunday. Both a pro and a con is that this eatery is located within the Starbucks Reserve, made it super noisy due to the crowd milling about the Starbucks portion.
We ordered the truffle and mushroom pizza and added fennel sausage to it for an extra $ 3, which was well worth it. The pizza was pretty good, had enough mushrooms, distinct truffle flavor, and the sausage was hearty. Ordered a beer which took forever to come to the table, wasn’t a beer that we ended up liking, so that was a miss. Service was decent.
Overall, wouldn’t mind coming back, but wouldn’t go out of our way to come back.

We ended up coming here after the other location had some kind of mechanical problem and we are glad we did because it led us to the Starbucks Roastery :). What a fun and unique place – that review will come next.
Serious Pie: we are big pizza fans and make our own pizzas at home so we hold our pizzas to a higher level. We thought the pizza was pretty good but not amazing like some Unilocal reviews would suggest.
We tried their basic margarita pizza and thought the sauce stole the show. The crust was flaky and good but didn’t have much flavor.
The service was attentive but not super friendly. Apparently they have a HH that is amazing $ 6 pies! We sadly did not get to try that out. The location is cool because it is in the Starbucks roaster and you can order a French press at your table which I thought was cool. And the building is so beautiful and stunning – love the atmosphere!
Oh they have their own locally made root beer which I always think is awesome and I thought theirs was pretty good.

People eat at Serious Pie because of Starbucks Reserves Roastery. The only Roastery in the world and it’s a destination ~ the leased area that Serious Pie resides in is expensive — and that is why serious management at Serious Pie are charging their customers premium prices for their less than premium pies.
My friends and I (4 ppl) went in on a Sunday night and though there were plenty of table available, it look the hostess about 10 minutes to seat us. She had to meander around the back side of the space, then to the left, then around back to the front… then slowly and very carefully started to place the menus and place mats on a 8 seater table that’s already half occupied by three other people. Apparently, instead of the other 3 unoccupied 4 seater tables that will give everyone their privacy and space, she wanted us to share a table. She didn’t ask, and my wife had to immediately correct her thinking on how everyone wants to share in the comradeship of eating pies that are made by Serious People.
We ordered a couple appetizers — a spanish octopus dish and a recommended off-​menu special calamari dish. The portion was what you would expect from a high end restaurant charging 10+ dollars for appetizers. Fairly tasty, but I had better from chain restaurants like Carraba’s or Macaroni Grill. The dip wasn’t memorable for the calamari — and I couldn’t tell that they bathed the squiddies in butter milk.
The pies we ordered — Soft Egg, Fennel Sausage, and Seasonal mushroom pies, overall, they are all edible, but here are some problems:
1) on the soft egg pie — there were like 2 eggs on the whole pie. Apparently, every piece I selected (4 pieces) had no egg on it, only prosciutto. For a pizza with soft eggs as the first ingredient, I expected eggs! But since the whole pie is under a layer of arugula, it’s impossible to tell unless I start manhandling all the pieces. For a small pie that cost 18 dollars, they can spare a few more eggs.
2) The bread — they advertise the crust that’s awesome, but what we got was over cooked cardboard. We got a serious picture to show off this seriously burnt crust that I pulled off because I don’t want to eat charcoal.
3) portions of topping — again, tiny. I think in the entire sausage pie, we have like 5 pieces of sausage. They were slightly larger than the avergae papa john’s sausage, but comon!
There are probably many better restaurants just around the corner that’s outside of the Roastery. But if you want to sit and watch tourist playing with Roastery mugs and other goodies, then by all means, come and enjoy some Serious Pies.

The good stuff. And close enough to as much coffee as you like, the Starbucks Roastery is quite the experience already.
I have had my fair share of authentic Italian pizzas, straight from the source. The pies here are legit, and while not necessarily the same you’d have in Italy, they won’t disappoint the gourmet in you. The menu is short enough to make you think the ingredients are fresh, selected and well balanced, I actually prefer it that way. My only gripe is about the price, pizza (or bruschetta for that matter) should never cost as much, but financial considerations aside, I subscribe to the «seriousness» of the pies, and would gladly come back. For gluten-​intolerant and carb-​haters, just don’t bother. Or splurge for the one time and enjoy it.

Serious Pie has taught me that my pizza philosophy is mo’ toppings, mo’ bettah. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of having been raised on pizzas from Costco and Little Caesar’s. In any case, I feel that Serious Pie seriously skimps on toppings.
My boyfriend ordered his favorite: the $ 18 SWEET FENNEL SAUSAGE pizza with roasted peppers and provolone. My adventurous self decided to try the $ 19 PENN COVE CLAMS pizza with pancetta tesa and lemon thyme. After tasting both, I can claim that sausage on a pizza trumps clams on a pizza, especially if that sausage if huge and homemade. I can also claim that there is such a thing as too much crust. I can ALSO claim that thin crust pizza tastes like thick crust pizza when it’s baked for too long and becomes hard to bite. Oh oh, and melted cheese is many times tastier than non-​melted cheese. As you might guess, I was not a big fan of the shredded unmelted cheese covering my few-​and-​far-​between clams.
Skimpy toppings, hefty price tags? Man, where’s my deep dish.

I don’t get why this place is hyped. Ordered the soft egg, prosciutto, arugula pizza ($ 18). Nothing special and also not enough prosciutto imo. Apparently pizzas usually doesn’t come with much prosciutto but I would prefer little more for the price I’m paying. I love me more than less meat on my pizzas. The service here is really slow. I can understand it if it was really busy but there weren’t many tables.
This is located inside the Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room, which you should definitely check out before or after eating here and order a coffee!

Serious Pie was one of my Unilocal bookmarks for my trip to Seattle, but when we found ourselves at the downtown location we had already gorged on triple coconut pie and donuts from Dahlia’s leaving no room for pizza. So when we visited the Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room for breakfast and found it was also home to Serious Pie, we thought it was kismet and stayed for lunch.
A Tom Douglas restaurant, Serious Pie uses a recipe requiring a cold 3-​day process that produces a great pizza crust. We started off with some drinks. Their moscato is fabulous and they also serve a stoup beer that was tasty as well. We ordered two of the restaurant’s most popular pizzas: the sweet fennel sausage (made in house), roasted peppers, provolone and the soft eggs, smoked prosciutto, pecorino sardo, arugula. The sausage was a little too much for me, but I just loved the soft eggs pizza. That was the clear favorite for our table. Later on I found out from a friend and local resident that the roasted seasonal mushrooms and truffle cheese pizza is super delicious as well.
Loved this location and the atmosphere. Great place to relax and enjoy some good food with friends!

I love bringing people from out of town to this location! That way they get to check out the Roastery and it’s a convenient location to start at when you’re having a night out on the Hill.
If there’s a line to get in the Starbucks, just walk to the front and ask the security guard if there’s a wait for Serious Pie. Most likely the answer will be no and you can go in with your party.
Getting menu items to share us the best idea! My favorite pie is the soft egg which comes with arugula and prosciutto. Seriously delicious!
Staff is always attentive and helpful. :-)

You first eat with your eyes!
Even though there was a Serious Pie location within walking distance, we über’ed to this one after driving past it the night before and noticing how cool of a location and building it was in. The Starbucks roasting house it’s located in absolutely gorgeous. I kinda geeked out on the space since I’m into design. Them lights tho.
The pizza is great. Neapolitan style with fresh local ingredients. Blistery crust with a good chew and char. Definite 4 star pizza. What earns them the fifth star is that we arrived at 4pm and unintentionally made it for happy hour (3−5pm) where you can get half sized pizzas (normally $ 17 – 19) for $ 6! We literally got 3 high end pizzas and some fizzy water for like $ 20. Cheap eats alert! It wasn’t even busy.
All the pizzas were delicious!
PENN COVE CLAMS, PANCETTA, AND LEMON THYME — The brightness of the lemon makes the pie pop.
SOFT EGGS, PROSCIUTTO, PECORINO, AND ARUGULA — Looks like a salad on top of a pita but that runny egg makes it. My favorite.

GRILLED FIG, COPPA, FRIED SAGE, AND CHEVRE (goat cheese) — Sweet, smooth, and savory. Good stuff.
If I was local, I’d put SP on the happy hour cheap eats rotation.

«Seriously. The pie will speak for itself.»
Note: this Serious Pie location shares the same building as the Starbucks Reserve. (Ahem. Score!)
Our search for a nice «sit down» lunch place takes us slightly up the hill on Pine Street. Our cravings for a delicious pizza without the penalty of a couple miles walk landed us at the doorstep of Serious Pie. This is a very unique location and most of my coworkers would not even realize how close it is to the Metropolitan Towers. We were immediately seated next to the large windows. Seating style allows for some flexibility with large lunch crowds and exudes a casual feel.
The service was prompt and friendly which are two traits we really appreciate during a weekday lunch hour rush. The menu was simple and the item descriptions made deciding a challenging. I decided on the prosciutto, arugula, and soft egg pizza. Soft egg on pizza was a genius concoction. The pizza arrived still warm and generously garnished with pecorino sardo. The crust was nicely crisp with light charring. The arugula was still fresh and added a fantastic depth of flavor. The prosciutto and soft egg provided a unique blend of richness. This pie was serious. The price may be a shock but the taste and freshness explains it all.

When asking about the best pizza in Seattle, I constantly was referred to Serious Pie. There are several locations but we ended up at the one within the Starbucks Roastery.
We arrive and it’s happy hour! Sweet! We get 2 pizzas– margarita and mushroom. I always have to have soda with pizza so I got a Mexican coke. Delish!
There were other pizza options and drink options but we stuck to those. And HH made them $ 6 each.
The pizzas come out on a black slab and they are pretty big for one person. But it was pretty good!
I would recommend trying it, but do it at happy hour!