Portland: One of the World’s Best Pizza Cities
Is it better than New York City?
Name the best pizza city in the world. I’d wager your answer is going to be New York City, Rome, or Naples. But what’s after that?
For me, it’s Portland, Oregon. I am certainly not alone. A few experts claim Portland is better than New York City. The quality, diversity, and inventiveness of pizza in Portland in part thanks to its overall food scene over the last few decades. It’s an environment where chefs are encouraged to experiment and break boundaries with a dining population deeply attuned to what it consumes. Starting up a restaurant in Portland is more affordable and has fewer barriers compared to places like New York City and San Francisco, enabling more people to give their ideas a go. Dozens of high quality farmers’ markets and proximity to hundreds of purveyors of locally grown ingredients rounds out an ecosystem where creativity and excellence in local food has been more the norm than the exception for a long time.
Frequently, I would have a pizza out of a food truck or a small pop-up that would seem mid-tier for the region, but put in another city it could be the best pizza around. All said, here are some of my favorites in Portland:
Cafe Olli
The word “artisan” gets thrown around a lot. Like “luxury” condos and “natural” foods, “artisan” is so broadly interpreted and applied it’s usually a meaningless descriptor. However, Cafe Olli is one of the few places that genuinely embodies “artisan.”
Cafe Olli is a small shop with a impressive amount of detail given to each pie. I sat at the far end of the counter overlooking the prep area and the oven while I watched my pizza being prepared. From a ball, the dough was meticulously handled and stretched, and cheeses were pulled apart with bits delicately arranged. Corn was sprinkled around the pizza with care. More time was spent preparing my pizza compared to the time it spent in the oven. And when it was out, basil and bits of cheese were individually placed atop.
The crust is similar to a Neapolitan style with a thicker crust and more of a sourdough flavor. When holding a slice, it just barely held all of the ingredients. A few times I tackled it with a fork and knife. All of the flavors here, the sharper cheeses, corn, and peppers, all balanced and mellowed each other out without squelching. A very smooth, delightful pie.
A few days after I took this photo, the New York Times named it one of the top 50 restaurants in the U.S. they are “most excited about right now.” A friend and I returned the next week and explored more of the menu. I had the whipped ricotta toast with citrus marmalade, lemon, and bee pollen: probably the best toast I’ve ever had. Cafe Olli would be one of my mainstays if I lived in Portland.
Lovely’s Fifty Fifty
Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, which opened in 2010, set an incredibly high bar for pizza in Portland. Chef Sarah Minnick was trailblazing in experimenting with edible flowers, plants, and foraged ingredients. Relationships with local farmers and growers gives her a full palette to make creations aligned with ingredient seasonality at a depth far beyond most pizzerias. All of this atop a solid sourdough crust. On my last visit, I took a group of six so we could try a few different pies, including:
Cosmic gold potatoes two ways, with curly kale and parsley pesto
Valley sweet peaches with sweet corn, escarole, and guanciale
Fresh mozzarella with basil and salami
All of the pizzas felt light and fresh, as if the ingredients were picked up at the farmers’ market earlier that morning and prepared that afternoon. Quite possibly, they were.
We each got a scoop of ice cream afterwards (ice cream is the other “50” of Lovely’s), and we all left with great energy and joy. It’s one of those pizzerias where you feel like you’ve experienced something spectacular as you walk out.
Minnick is the subject of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table” Season 2, Episode 6, and she was just deservingly nominated as a 2024 James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Chef.
Ken’s Artisan Pizza
If Lovely’s Fifty Fifty is the cornerstone of Portland’s pizza scene, Ken’s Artisan Pizza is the foundation. Opened in 2006, it has since become a world-class institution (currently ranked third in the U.S. and 18th in the world by Italian judges). The best part here is the crust. If you can imagine if the crisp texture and flavor of the most premium baguette with the chew and lightness of the best Neapolitan pizza you’ve ever had, and fermented longer to have more complex flavors pop out of the dough: that’s the magical crust of Ken’s.
Ken Forkish has retired to Hawai‘i, but the quality sustains. On my last visit I got the seasonal “Cherry Bomb” with “marinated cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, LAN-ROC bacon, fried shallots, etxegarai cheese.” I had to look ingredients up on my phone before I ordered: LAN-ROC is a local farm, and etxegarai is a smoked aged sheep’s cheese. A great mix of sweet, salty, and savory.
Scottie’s Pizza Parlor
If I claimed that Scottie’s Pizza Parlor is Portland’s best New York style slice shop, I might be underselling it. I think it’s the best New York style slice on the west coast, and if Scottie’s landed in New York City, I think it would be one of the best slice shops there too.
Scottie’s took a New York formula and adapted it to locally-grown wheat, and slowly fermenting the dough. The result is a distinctly New York-like crust with sourdough notes that holds ingredients strongly. Scottie’s uses California-grown tomatoes and local cheeses. One of the slices I had was their award-winning “#1” pizza, with a mix of fresh and aged mozzarella, basil, shaved Parmesan, and olive oil. It’s almost buttery, and melts in the mouth in a way that deserves pause to process the flavor.
Pizzeria La Sorrentina
Pizzeria La Sorrentina was a big surprise for me, as it is tucked away in a strip mall in suburban Vancouver, Washington. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t living nearby. Pizzaiolo and owner Daisuke “Dice-K” Matsumoto grew up in Japan, moved to Sorrento, Italy to study pizza and Italian food, and opened up an unassuming under-the-radar pizzeria.
It’s high-tier Neapolitan pizza to a precision, with a wide menu of standards and creative combinations.
Around the time I was finishing eating, chef Dice-K went through the dining area and walked straight to my table and asked me how my pizza was. I was taken off guard to be singled out, and he said he knew I knew a lot about pizza because I was wearing a Mozzeria shirt. Busted! This led to a lengthy conversation about pizza around the world and sharing our favorite places, which went on well after the place closed. He walked through which flours local pizzerias were using, and pointed me to some of his favorites in the region. I returned twice after my initial visit; it’s a great neighborhood pizzeria.
Cashew and Zoom
In Vancouver I stayed with cats Cashew and Zoom.
Cashew, an orange cat born in France, does not abide by rules. The immediate neighbors knew his favorite hiding spots, and Cashew would even get trapped in others’ garages. Two neighbors I spoke with shared loving affection with a sliver of disdain for Cashew. I’d call for him every night and shake treats, and even then, it was up to him when he’d decide to come back. This is not a normal situation when I am responsible for others’ cats, but one I got used to (with a lot of email documentation with Cashew’s regular humans, who were on the other side of the planet, and were very used to Cashew’s… independent demeanor). When inside, as if he is self-appointed royalty, Cashew has a small pillow and a human hairbrush he prefers to get brushed with, which I dutifully employed, and then I’d let him back outside again as it would be his next immediate request. One time I was a little late on letting him out and he broke out of the house, damaging a screen window. Oh, Cashew.
Zoom, by comparison, was much more routine and predictable (and not destructive). An old and scruffy cat, she would do rounds of the back garden every morning while I worked on my laptop on the back porch. It was a predictable, methodical, clockwise pattern every day. The back yard was her domain, which she stuck to. A cute sweetheart.
Hiking and Biking
I was lucky to go on wonderful hikes and bike rides almost every weekend along the Oregon Coast, Columbia River and in Portland. Take a peek at an abridged gallery here.
More for your Portland to-do list
After enjoying dozens of pizzas in the Portland area, in addition to the above, I strongly recommend all of these as they range from great to fantastic in their own right: Apizza Scholls, Basil & Board (Salem), Crust Collective (Vancouver), Dove Vivi, Flame Pizza, Nonavo Pizza (Vancouver), Nostrana, Pan Con Queso, Pizza Thief, Please Louise, Ranch, and Reeva.
Schedule
I’m sticking to Massachusetts this month, wrapping up my time in Belmont, heading to Wellesley in a couple days, and then going to Cambridge for the next week. I’ll be in D.C. starting in April for at least a couple months. I’m figuring out my June and July, which will likely keep me around D.C. and Virginia, and will be back up in Minnesota by mid-August. From there, it’s tempting to go back to Portland. Or Canada. Or Europe?
Have any suggestions as to where I should go? Do you need a long-term house sitter? What are you up to? I’d love to hear from you!
Yours in cats in pizza,
Aaron
Delish!