Why is good pizza so pricey in Seattle? Our critic investigates (2024)

Seattle used to be cheap. If you’ve been here for a minute, you experienced the sticker shock of the city becoming a top-tier expensive one, with that then topped by a spate of rather unbelievable inflation. Even the most basic of small luxuries — that’s pizza — suddenly cost a lot more. When the total for your regular Pagliacci order started to creep toward $70, maybe you started to think about the value proposition.

Pizza somehow went from a lazy evening’s easy treat to feeling like it needed to be truly Worth It.

So how do the best pizzas around actually stack up, value-wise? My trusty research assistant and I set out to assess three of our all-time favorites — My Friend Derek’s, Delancey and Stevie’s Famous — by isolating them in a vacuum chamber, taking volumetric measurements and … just kidding. We got a scale and analyzed price by weighing the pies in their boxes, then subtracting the weight of the box and dividing the cost per ounce. Math!

The makers were asked about their costs, including ingredients and the value they seek to provide. We chose pepperoni as the most iconic of toppings (and picked up pizzas to avoid the tangled issue of delivery fees).

And we tasted. It was the very best kind of research — except for the depressing part, which was the two control pizzas …

First: Domino’s at 79 cents per ounce with an online coupon (only a fool orders a Domino’s pizza without a coupon, and that fool, in this case, would’ve paid $1.05 per ounce for full price). The crust was leathery; the cheese somehow oily and dry; the mealy-textured, razor-thin pepperoni tasted like a hot dog made some pepperoni out of itself. Proving the even-bad-pizza-is-good-pizza adage wrong, the Pizza Laboratory dejectedly rated this Not Worth It.

Second: Pagliacci at 77 cents per ounce. This sample from the longtime local chain disappointed due to tough, dry crust. However, Pagliacci cost less per ounce than Domino’s (!?), and it is so, so much better. But nowhere near as good as …

OUR TOP 3 PIZZAS

My Friend Derek’s

myfrienddereks.com, website updated with availability; pickup location: 3601 Woodland Park Ave. N. (Fremont), Seattle

COST PER OUNCE: 59 cents ($28 for a 9-inch-by-13.5-inch pizza)

MAKER’S NOTES: Ironically, Derek Reiff began experimenting with making pizza because he’d developed a “big national-chain pizza problem,” ordering delivery after his long-distance running (and was also “addicted to those coupons”). Now he runs a limited-production, pickup-only Fremont pizza kitchen, and while his hefty square pizzas are hard to score, they’ve acquired a cult following among aficionados who wouldn’t touch Domino’s with a 10-foot pizza peel.

This may be in part because, as a one-person operation with relatively low overhead, Reiff intentionally sets his prices at “more than fair.” He says he’s attuned to “the cost of eating out in Seattle, [where you have to be] very choosy and know your great places.” Also, he believes that with Detroit-style pie, it’s “important to be extremely generous.”

INGREDIENTS: Flour for crust: regeneratively farmed Shepherd’s Grain and local Cairnspring Mills; Stanislaus 7/11 and 6 in 1 brand canned tomatoes for sauce; premium Grande mozzarella along with cheddar and fontina (brand names withheld at My Friend Derek’s request); Ezzo pepperoni.

CRUST PROCESS: Two-plus days, starting with around one and a half hours “in a cloud of flour dust,” followed by a 40-hour-ish cold ferment, all dough balled and stretched by My Friend Derek’s own two hands.

TASTING NOTES: The Lab LOVES this pizza, rating it far better than any other thick-crust pie — whether Detroit-style, Chicago-style or other — anywhere around town. Crust: “almost croissantlike buttery, large and small honeycomb bubbles, bouncy chew, edge crispy/caramelized then more beautiful cheese, center also ideal.” Sauce: “oregano-forward, but not too much so.” Pepperoni: “stacked cups, possibly too much.” Overall: “incredibly, does not eat heavy — arguably, in its class, actual perfection.”

VALUE ASSESSMENT: “Extremely generous,” yesssss! Reiff puts 18 ounces of cheese on each pie!? If only it were easier to get My Friend Derek’s … and he is, in fact, looking for a brick-and-mortar location.

Delancey

1415 N.W. 70th St., Seattle; 206-838-1960, delanceyseattle.com

COST PER OUNCE: $1.26 ($23 for a 12-inch pie)

MAKER’S NOTES: A decade and a half in, this Ballard sit-down spot still packs in fans from the neighborhood and far beyond, with original co-owner/ultra-pizza-nerd Brandon Pettit at the helm.

Prices are set by tracking menus at like-minded operations here and nationwide: “We’re cheaper or the same … and we use the best ingredients available,” Pettit says, while “everyone is paid a fair wage.” (With prospective changes afoot for Seattle small businesses’ minimum wage, he says Delancey may need to raise prices up to $2 per pizza, “or do something drastic, like switch to counter service.”)

Pettit describes Delancey’s style as “farm-to-table meets New York meets Italy” — sit at the counter and witness the intense care each pizza receives, while feeling the heat of the glowing coals in the wood-fired oven.

INGREDIENTS: Flour for crust: Shepherd’s Grain; Stanislaus Alta Cucina canned plum tomatoes for sauce; premium Grande mozzarella (fresh and aged), along with 18-month-aged Grana Padano from Italy; Zoe’s Meats pepperoni.

CRUST PROCESS: About 30 hours, start to oven, with an overnight rise, a rest in the fridge and then out of it, with dough balls then hand-stretched to order.

TASTING NOTES: Delancey’s crust stays “very thin but holds up, edges puffy/particularly crisp on the outside, not oversalty but still compelling, echo of fermented taste, blackened bubbles around edge and perfect leopard-bottomed,” with the sauce rating “balanced flavor, retiring in a good way,” while the bigger pepperoni slices were “classic, mild but meaty, ideal.”

VALUE ASSESSMENT: The higher cost per ounce here completely tracks: Besides primo ingredients, the methodologies require skilled staff and lots of time (that fire doesn’t make, nor stoke, itself), and unlike the other pizzas here, this one comes with super-pleasant table service. And the smallish pies don’t eat like personal-sized — turns out, real ingredients and amazing taste are both filling. This stood out as the most balanced pepperoni pizza overall — one to order again and again. After all these years, Delancey is still killing it.

Stevie’s Famous

822 S.W. 152nd St., Burien, 707-783-8437; 4864 Beacon Ave. S., Seattle, 206-823-6856; steviesfamous.com

COST PER OUNCE: 86 cents ($29.50 for a 17-inch pizza)

MAKER’S NOTES: Served since 2022 at a retro-feel counter-service spot in Burien and now also inside the Clock-Out Lounge on Beacon Hill, Stevie’s has quickly earned the fame of its name — with the Stevie in question being co-owner Shane Abbott’s pug mix. While he hesitates to ascribe a style, the pizza’s New York-adjacent and everything’s scrupulously sourced, as it is with Derek’s and Delancey, too. And as with those two, methods matter: Abbott says the “really hydrated” dough is “harder to shape — it takes more skill and practice and training,” from the making through the baking.

Workers at Stevie’s get health insurance benefits, “and these days, you want kitchen crews making over $30 an hour in Seattle, ideally, and we’re always pushing for at least that,” Abbott says. “And that’s still not near enough to make sense in this city.” With all things considered, he says, “We try to price competitively in the market.”

INGREDIENTS: Flour for crust: all from Washington state, primarily Cairnspring Mills; organic Bianco DiNapoli canned tomatoes for sauce; premium Grande mozzarella (fresh and aged), along with Italian Grana Padano; Ezzo pepperoni plus Levoni salami nuggets.

CRUST PROCESS: A natural sourdough starter named Ruth (in honor of activist/scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore), a “pretty gentle mix that requires more building strength by hand” and a two-to-three-day ferment.

TASTING NOTES: Spoiler alert: Stevie’s at the Clock-Out is the Lab’s go-to for getting pizza to-go, and so it shall remain, with too many effusive observations to fully transcribe here. But: “bottom crust has magnificent body and chew, honeycomb air pockets in outer edges, cushy, truly delicious, dip in herby ranch” ($1 extra, Worth It), “not shy about nicely acidic sauce,” and with pepperoni “it’s a lot, flavorwise, in a stupendous way.”

VALUE ASSESSMENT: As with all three favorites here: so very Worth It.

DISCUSSION: As our research shows, My Friend Derek’s truly is your friend, making world-class Detroit-style pizza that costs less than Domino’s or Pagliacci (!). Then for just pennies per ounce more, the excellence of Stevie’s is there for you, absolutely akin to New York City’s best. And if you’re willing to spring for table service, wood-fired classic Delancey represents tremendously delicious value.

And chances are, scientifically speaking, that your favorite local independent pizzeria is very much Worth It, too.