Not for the first time, you find yourself at a wine tasting where the eavesdropping is more compelling than the Washington merlot in your hand. The woman pouring is telling the guy next to you how she's house-sitting in Snohomish, where there's a pizza place that sells the absolute best New York–style pizza in the state. "It's run by this older couple who moved to this tiny town from New York," she says. "Thing is, they're only open certain days, so you have to call in and listen to the answering machine." You butt in to ask what the name is, and she tells you Number 1 New York Pizza.
Steven Miller
Tony Ventura: Survived lung cancer. And food critics.
Steven Miller
Relita Ventura swirls on the sauce.
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Number 1 New York Pizza 17809 Highway 9 S.E., Snohomish, 360-668-7282. Open for lunch Tues. & Thurs.–Sat., dinner Tues.–Sat. Closed Sun.–Mon. (Call to confirm.)
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You find the phone number on the Web and call. A woman with the thickest Bronx accent you've heard on the West Coast answers. "I was just checking to see when you were open this week?" you say.
"When were you thinking of coming in?" she asks, her tone clipped and suspicious. You tell her Wednesday.
That's OK then, she replies. "We're sup-POSED to be closed for August. But on the days when HE comes in, we might as well open. What time were you thinking?" The two of you settle on 7.
The drive takes 45 minutes in rush-hour traffic: Across the 520 bridge, north through Kirkland and Woodinville, the highways narrowing as you turn onto State Road 9 and then pass through an intersection your iPhone identifies as downtown Clearview. Clearview appears to consist of a gas station and a couple of strip malls, patched-together buildings sharing unpaved parking lots and signs. You park at a narrow shop in the process of being striped red, white, and green, though the painters haven't yet reached the roofline. A buxom woman painted on the window, standing next to three lap dogs, waves you inside. Welcome to Number 1 New York Pizza, and the world of Tony and Relita Ventura.
There are Seattle restaurants that take their inspiration from Le Corbusier—fat on white space, lean on clutter, where the purity of the design is supposed to intimidate you into silent reverie over the art you are about to consume. And then there's the Venturas' place.
Including the kitchen, it's not much bigger than a Capitol Hill one-bedroom. Every surface, horizontal and vertical, is covered in the evidence of decades in business. Christmas garlands loop from the rafters over the kitchen, with TONY PLUS RELITA painted along the diagonal braces and = GOOD PIZZA on the horizontal strut. The walls, what used to be the takeout counter, and one of the three tables in the dining area are covered in small wood boxes, painted in intricate floral patterns, and handmade animal figurines. Larger, color-saturated canvases are stacked up against the counter, the patterns on them ranging from glorified chintz to jagged, rhythmic abstracts.
Relita, a 70-something woman with shoulder-length gray hair and a wary greeting, hands you menus and shuffles behind the counter to pat out a pizza, occasionally shooting concerned looks your way. It takes a while before you can focus on what to order, caught up as you are in reading the rules on the faded signs spilling down from the ceiling, each one tacked to the one above it. "We now have bell peppers," one reads. Another states, "Please do not bring drinks. We have drinks." You learn that credit cards are not accepted, and that even if the cook is rude your food will be prepared with special care.
Meanwhile, a man in his late 60s who looks like a retired Hell's Angel is standing at the other booth. His creased, oak-colored skull is wrapped in a red bandanna, and he's talking rapidly at the family sitting there in a Sicilian accent so thick you have to tune into it, catching half the words and making up the rest. When he walks behind the counter, you realize he is the Tony of TONY PLUS RELITA. You also start to notice photos of him pasted up around the walls.
"You ever seen my face?" he eventually greets you with. From where? you ask. "In the paper. On the bus. A guy told me I'm on a billboard in Oregon." He walks behind the counter, pulls out a Seattle Times, and brings it over: He's the star of an ad campaign there for Providence Cancer Care Partnership. The tagline is "Survived food critics. And lung cancer."
You talk a while, he putters off into the back room behind the kitchen, and Relita comes over to take your order, unleashing a motherly grin as she arrives; it quickly flees behind a frown of concern, then re-emerges again. You realize, with not a little relief, that she's worried for you, not about you.
The photocopied menu—"Take it home!" Relita tells you—lists pizzas, baked sandwiches, and a few dinners, all basic American Italian food of your childhood, and your parents' childhoods, too. You order a pepperoni pizza with olives, with a salad on the side. Baked ziti, too. Baked ziti only seems appropriate here.
Relita returns to the counter to make your salad, while explaining to the family across the aisle that the Venturas are bringing someone on to learn the recipes and keep the business going in case Tony gets sick again. The new girl's the one responsible for the painting, while Tony is emptying out the back room in order to expand.
