A serious happy hour

It’s Friday, which means that people will be plotting all day where to meet their friends for happy hour. Last year I wrote about some of my favorite happy hours, and there’s one more I definitely need to add to the list.

It’s the pizza happy hour at Serious Pie, Tom Douglas’s gourmet take on a pizzeria. Happy hour is early (3:00-5:00 p.m.) and short, but if you can make it during this window, you should. It can be virtually impossible to score a seat in Serious Pie during lunch or dinner.

Full-size pizza are usually around $17, but during happy hour, you can order mini pies for just $5. Happy hour beer is $3 and wine is $5.

Last week my friend Sharon and I were shopping downtown one afternoon and ducked into Serious Pie for a hearty snack and to escape an impending rainstorm. Pizza toppings run the gamut from basic (mozzarella and tomato) to full-blown foodie (guanciale, soft egg and arugula).

We ordered two mini pies to share: the chanterelle mushroom and truffle cheese and one with Penn Cove clams, pancetta and lemon thyme.

The clam and pancetta pizza is a salty snack lover’s dream, while the mushroom and the other pie had a sweet and mellow flavor with just a hint of truffle. The pizza at Serious Pie is soft and pillowy (no cracker-thin crust here!) making the top-notch ingredients taste that much more luxurious.

Oh Mioposto

The best pizza I’ve ever had came from a shop in the Venice train station. It was a slice of margherita pizza with basil, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and a thin but perfectly crisp crust.

That was six years ago, and as I recently told my friend Mary, who was with me on that trip, I still dream about that pizza.

We were sharing lunch at Mioposto, an Italian pizzeria and cafe located in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood.

Like the pizza of my dreams, the pies at Mioposto have a cracker-thin crust and focus on getting the most flavor out of choice ingredients. Mary and I had the Pinnochio with salami, hot Italian sausage, pepperoni, salsa di pomodori, mozzarella, mixed olives and fresh tomatoes.

And we also tried the Pizza Del Giardino with artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, garlicky mixed olives, fontina, mozzarella and salsa di pomodori.

We paired our pizza with the delicious Della Casa salad, which had carmelized onions in a vinaigrette.

I’ll still pine for that perfect slice in Venice, but it’s nice to know that good Italian fare is not so far away.