w00t! Opa! I finally found a [mostly] proper Greek-style pizza place in WA!

Drove past Acropolis Pizza and Pasta while in Kirkland over the weekend – I keep forgetting that town is nearby… I seem to spend more time in Bellevue or Redmond – and since they were closed on Sunday, I decided to wander back today…

Wander might be the wrong word: I purposely drove 15 minutes to get there for lunch with a full case of hunger in tow.

Greek-style pizza is something I never expected to find out of the NYC-Boston corridor. I grew up on it, seeing as I knew the owners of a chain of pizza places, but I know a lot of people that don’t like it much. You see, Greek-style pizza is a bit heavy and, yeah it’s pretty greasy. But in a good way. In fact, before the health conscious 80’s, Captain’s Pizza offered extra oil as a topping. No lie – I’m serious – it was really on the menu.

It’s also a pizza that has very little crust around the edges; it’s almost like a pan pizza that way, but it’s not deep dished either. It gets laid out in a pizza pan that has a cake-pan like lip and they run cheese almost to the very edge. Makes it impossible to pick up, but who cares? And like other Greek places that I’ve been to, they don’t skimp on the toppings either.

Of course, it’s the toppings that make a mostly proper place, rather than wholy proper… I think they had cheddar cheese mixed with the mozz on the pie. No real bacon either; just Canadian bacon. I oops’d and ordered it today without thinking about it – had a flashback of sorts because the place reminds me of my old pizza haunts. It’s not bad mind you… it’s just very… well, a very Californian thing. Sauce was good though, so I’ll forgive them the toppings. The crust was a typical Greek crust, too, which is what wow’d me. There’s another local pizza place that is run by a Greek staff/family but they don’t offer Greek-style pizza, so I was prepared to be let down again. I shoulda known when I saw the whole wheat crust thing on the other place’s menu – nothing like that at the Acropolis. In fact, I almost fell outta the booth when I noticed that they have grinders on the menu as, well, grinders. I think the owner got lost on i-90 and ended up out here by accident, but he’s more than welcome!

And while I’m still on the look out for a thin crust candidate and a chicken parm grinder I can cross one thing off the list…

Pizza salvation is only 12 minutes away, so long as it’s not Sunday!