OF COURSE, the 15th birthday party for Seattle’s beloved Bar del Corso had excellent snacks.
The wood-fired oven — imported from Naples, with “BAR DEL CORSO” emblazoned in white tile, it’s been making world-class pizza since the start — got the day off. The deep fryer, however, was working overtime on batch after batch of two treasured snacks: suppli al telefono, golden orbs of risotto with melty mozzarella in the middle that stretches out like a telephone wire, a Roman street-food classic; and baccalà mantecato fritters made with whipped salt cod, potato, garlic and Parmigiano, silky-soft and savory inside, crisp-fried outside, traditional, fantastic.
The quantities were bottomless, the lemon-slice-lined dishes refilled over and over; overeager partygoers were burning their mouths and not caring a bit.
Long toothpicks secured mini-towers of Fra’ Mani Toscano salame, cherry tomato and fresh mozzarella to honey-colored, honeycombed hunks of housemade focaccia; rich tuna spread topped crispy crostini. Later, there was cake — ordered from Deep Sea Sugar & Salt, Delite Bakery and Fuji, plus a pistachio one gifted by neighboring Perihelion Brewery.
Bar del Corso | Seattle Times Critic’s Pick | Italian/pizza | pizzas $23-$24, small plates/salads $5-$19 | Beacon Hill | 3057 Beacon Ave. S., Seattle; 206-395-2069; bardelcorso.com | reservations on Tock or by phone | noise level: moderate | access: no obstacles, two gender-neutral restrooms
All were welcome for this celebration of one of Seattle’s low-key best restaurants, and friends and fans of the Beacon Hill place — a loyal legion — filled the airy, trattoria-style dining room, spilling out onto the sidewalk and the pretty back patio. Icy spritzes waited in rows on the bar, with bitter Cynar a favorite; a “crazy amount” of prosecco got poured, chef/owner Jerry Corso noted later. All was gratis, as befits a party that a James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Hospitality throws for itself.
Also atop the Bar del Corso bar on this late-August Sunday afternoon: a 4-foot-high ice sculpture crowned with a big “15,” an incongruously grand yet perfect tribute, slowly melting like time itself. Corso said he was not at liberty to disclose the source — the crystal-clear, temporary monument was a gift from someone with whom he worked at the Westin back in the day, and that someone wasn’t in the ice-sculpture-carving game anymore and would entertain no inquiries about it.
Corso ended up behind the bar for quite a while, making more spritzes and fetching ice, wearing a yin-yang-patterned bucket hat and a costume lei that he’d put on at the photo booth. Local restaurant-industry luminaries toasted this favorite place: David Butler of Le Caviste, Carla Leonardi from Cafe Lago, Le-Gourmand-and-beyond’s Bruce and Sara Naftaly, Homer’s Logan Cox, Joey Serquinia from The Harvest Vine. Gina Tolentino Corso — co-owner of the place and also Jerry’s spouse — circulated, smiling. She said later that it was too hard to choose any particular standout moments, “just all the hugs and smiles and congratulations” from everyone.
Local combo Pocket Theory Jazz played amid the celebratory din. After the last cork popped, there was lots of time for cleanup before the business of being bustling and wonderful resumed Tuesday evening.
RIGHT NOW IS a great time to eat at Bar del Corso. The pizza, as mentioned, is always marvelous: primo toppings, layered neither too thickly nor too scant, on a 48-hours-plus fermented-and-proofed, nearly-Neapolitan-thin crust made with Shepherd’s Grain flour, cooked for 90 seconds at a beautifully blistering 850 degrees. On the menu since the beginning, the salame piccante with roasted peppers is a perennial favorite, and its tastes of salt and spice and fat and acid and roastiness all hit just right. But, then, as summer segues into fall, the specials chalkboard offers a pizza with chanterelles and pops of Sungold tomatoes that’s foolish to ignore.
Bar del Corso’s generously portioned small plates generally include shellfish in broths that must be sopped; a dish of meatballs that first seem plain but then ideally, subtly seasoned in their glossy tomato sauce; maybe a shudderingly good braised pork.
Then, at this time of year, the delicacy of fried squash blossoms stuffed with anchovy and mozzarella come around. Peak heirloom tomatoes get celebrated with luxurious tonnato scattered with fried capers, food that pushes all the buttons of savory, velvety, crispy, juicy, fresh. A Caesar-y salad of baby lettuces and assorted radicchio is simple, yet magical in its freshness, but if there’s a salad with figs, those come from the couple’s neighbor’s tree just blocks away. Likewise, any dessert with plums must be ordered, because those are ridiculously local, too.
Jerry, who grew up in Poulsbo and started out as a dishwasher at age 15, says he’s not here to reinvent any culinary wheels. Early on, he spent a year working in restaurants in Rome and Northern Italy; later, he’d become head chef at acclaimed Obelisk in Washington, D.C., also making dough at certified-Neapolitan 2Amys there. In Seattle, he cooked at Campagne, Cafe Lago and Harvest Vine. His Bar del Corso menu hews to Italian tradition: methods that make quality ingredients taste their greatest, highlighting what’s in season, year after year.
One reason Bar del Corso’s pizzas often fly under the best-pizza-list radar may be that Jerry doesn’t offer them to go — he doesn’t want them to travel that far on their way to your mouth. His standards for beverages dictate an all-Italian, small-producer wine list, and no decaf espresso is served.
Jerry speaks highly of his staff and upholds the value of time off — the restaurant is closed for the week of Labor Day, and between Christmas and New Year’s, every year. He modestly sidesteps allegations of mentorship, saying that “the restaurant as a whole” can be “a nice little jumping-off point” for staffers.
Former employee Melissa Miranda — chef/owner of Musang and Kilig, Food & Wine best new chef 2022, James Beard Awards finalist — says, “Jerry and Gina gave me … a home and a community,” that they “believed in me before a lot of people did, and gave me the space to start Musang as a pop-up in their restaurant. Without that opportunity, I’m honestly not sure where I’d be.”
Miranda says “Jerry taught me that the best food starts with the best ingredients, and that the really delicious things can’t be rushed — they take time.”
There’s so much more to say about Bar del Corso. Real quick: The Corsos raised funds for the place with backyard pizza parties. The space was a dive bar, the Beacon Pub, and in six months of work, they uncovered the original fir floors and somehow made the lighting always ideal. The wood-fired oven broke the sidewalk out front upon arrival; it turned out that under the concrete, it was just empty beer cans.
Gina curates the local art on the walls, and sometimes some of it is her own. She did all the graphic design for the place, and she and Jerry are planning to get matching tattoos of the Bar del Corso artichoke logo in honor of the 15th anniversary.
Bar del Corso is an exceptionally good value in Seattle today. You know when you go to a place and they say you should get three to four small plates per person? One server here actually down-sold us, advising during a moment of waffling that we could order less.
Everyone’s on the same side at Bar del Corso, the side of the good. Jerry and Gina call it a labor of love, and when you’re here, that love is real — in how well you’re cared for by the staff, in what you eat and drink, in the neighbors chatting, and babies being jiggled, and dates going really well. That’s just a regular night here, any time of the year, for the past 15 of them.
Bethany Jean Clement: 206-464-2050 or bclement@seattletimes.com. On Facebook at bethany.jean.clement and on Instagram @bethanyjeanclement. Clement has written about food, restaurants and the people and cultures intrinsic to them for The Seattle Times since 2014.
Dining and Cooking