We catch a whiff of the pizza and pasta at Stoneburner pretty often when en route down Ballard Avenue NW aka Pizza Row, so it was finally time to give it a try. This spot under Hotel Ballard usually looks beautiful and trendy inside and is always packed with equally beautiful and trendy people sitting in the window, so who would have thought it was so easy to get a reservation for 5 people with like 12 hours notice on a beautiful summery Friday evening!
Swanky Stoneburner doesn’t just specialize in pizza, but focuses on the cooking styles of the Mediterranean and stone hearth cooking– not that we were there to try anything new.
The pizza at Stoneburner was yummy and served on a super hip piece of wood. Although the crust was a little too burnt for Kerri’s liking and a little too tough for Sara’s achin’ teeth to manage, both pizzas (Calebrese Pepperoni and Mozzarella aka Margherita) were very flavorful and well balanced.
Despite Kerri’s pizza being a little spicy for her taste (she knew what she was signing up for), she quite enjoyed it. She has a love/hate relationship with wood fired pizza because of her intense hatred of burnt crust, but thought everything else was great. She found that the centre of the crust got a little bit flimsy, though it still enabled her to pick up the slices. The cheese was exactly her style with big bits of fresh mozzerella. Unfortunately, this pizza lost points for her when she saw its price tag, which she understands has to look like that in the lobby of a fancy hotel. She’ll be back, but likely with a date.
Sara always has trust issues with restaurants that claim to be good at everything AND then pizza but was pleasantly surprised. She found this pizza a little hard to manage and had to work for it, but the taste was great. She fought with the tough crust a lot, but the well thought out cheese to sauce ratio made up for it. She found it surprisingly spicy, but that was fine.
We had three guest reviewers also crammed into our little table under the window. Katie found the locale a bit pretentious. “But I see the value as a date spot…Really, I just like breadsticks,” she said. Though she enjoyed the pizza and experience overall, Shaun ultimately left us with the wisdom: “I’ve been more disappointed for more money.” Elyse thought her pasta needed more cheese.
Everyone liked the ambiance here, and Kerri highly appreciated the attractive manager/sommelier/whatever he was who kept cruising by. It’s definitely pricey – an excellent date spot – but probably not an every week sort of thing.
We gave this pizza a 4 out of 5.
Seattle Pizza Coalition 