Tutta Bella Comes to Wallingford

Pizza sucks in Seattle. Feel free to post your own obscure favorite in the comments or simply let it pass. Sure, there are a few highlights here or there around the city where something resembling an actual pizza can be obtained, but the overall quality of the city's pizza is piss poor. Here's a tip: If the crust is wet, it sucks. Wallingford, oddly, has a few ok places, though. The Wallingford Pizza House (previously The Chicago Pizza House hint hint at the writer's hometown) is...so-so. Northlake Tavern and Pizza House is a couple clicks above that on the evolutionary ladder. Very edible. Obviously we're struggling to establish a whole lot of pizza credibility in the neighborhood. Enter Tutta Bella, though.

We got a tip recently on the new Tutta Bella location and we feel a little sheepish about needing it because we drive past the new place on Stone Way at least a couple of times a week. Just didn't notice it. Now that it's open, though, and we're aware of its existance we are very aware of its existance. It's huge and bright and the parking overflow is noticable despite their vast lot. Last Friday night we called them up for takeout. We were put on hold indefinitely on our first call, a theme that would continue. Second time through we managed to get an order in. Basically, we threw darts at the menu and ordered two random pizzas --Four Cheese, ahem, Quattro Formaggi and Regina Margherita-- and were told to pick them up in twenty-five minutes. We stared at the menu for seventeen minutes, drove to Stone Way, parked three blocks away and arrived perfectly on time. To complete bedlam. Obviously the word is out. A wrap-around Disney Land style line waited for tables. We must be in the front row, though. Takeout, bitches. We jostled our way to the counter and were told that we'd need to talk to whateverhisnamewas for takeout who was, luckily, standing right there. He was on the phone, though, and then doing something with the computer and then on then on the phone again. Annoyed Eyes #1 failed to elicit any action. We employed Annoyed Eyes #2 and still nothing. Don't make us sigh! Finally someone helped an obviously slammed whateverhisnamewas by taking over at the takeout counter and retrieved our order, but it took us nearly half an hour to get in and out with pizzas.

Back at the Seattlest homestead we ate very good, very cold Neapolitan pizzas that set us back $20 and about an hour of chasing around. Tutta Bella is obviously awesome, as you should well know by now. After the mobs and mobs of people, the first thing you see when you enter are the giant brick ovens and immediately you start imagining the goodness that's going to come out of them. Once they work out the system Tutta Bella is going to be a pizza making machine in Wallingford. The volume of patrons that they've built the place for dwarfs their quaint Columbia City location. The kinks are pretty severe at the moment, though, and you may want to give them a few weeks before you join the throngs.