Cornelly

Much like a rigid pair of Levi’s or Donna Summer jams, Seattle’s pizza renaissance is everlasting. Great pasta is a harder nut to crack, but we’re blessed with some excellent semolina stuff, too.

Then there’s Cornelly. This small Italian spot on Capitol Hill is not just one of the only places two-timing all-purpose flour under the same roof—it’s also the best.

Pies dominate the clunker-free menu, and for good reason. They’re sporting crunchy-but-definitely-not-burnt crusts, smart topping combinations like smoked scamorza with a sh*tton of summer corn, and a fiery calabrian chili oil that’s worth loosening your fists over the two whole dollars it costs to add on. Treat Cornelly like a pizzeria, and you’d be none the wiser.

Meanwhile, springy extruded gemelli tossed in chartreuse-tinted pesto, a squash-y riff on cacio e pepe, and spruced-up bolognese with mint and pudgy rigatoni proves that Cornelly nails all matters related to wheat. Focaccia is the third notch in their belt—a tour de force of fluffy crumb and an exterior that brickles like the surface of crème brûlée. If you’ve done Cornelly right, your table should be coated corner to corner in gluten.

By winter, the oven-warmed dining room feels a world away, while dinner on the sidewalk patio during summertime plays out like a nightly block party. Both situations are walk-in-only, but swing by a half-hour before they open (we know, we know—it’s kind of necessary), and you’ll be among the natural wine and garlicky chicory caesar faster than the tempo change in “MacArthur Park.”

Food Rundown

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

Bread Service

Quarters of rounded focaccia arrive with craggy charred bits detailing the anatomy of each wedge. And yet, beneath this brittle film of toast is a steamy yeasted cloud that’s practically begging to be swiped through the compound butter of the moment, be it floral lavender or anise-punched fennel pollen. For crying out loud, don’t make it beg.

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

Chicory Caesar

Sigh. Another caesar salad with chicories. But the sharp radicchio bite is tempered well by sweet romaine, a blizzard of pecorino romano, a zippy anchovy vinaigrette, and crackly sourdough breadcrumbs distributed evenly for optimal crunch. Our sympathies if you're on Team Crouton—it'll all be OK.

Spaghetti

Think textbook cacio e pepe with perfectly chewy fresh spaghetti, only featuring melted-down zucchini adding a healthy dose of squashiness that plays nicely with all that cracked black pepper and cheesy starch-seized pasta water. Don’t pass it up.

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

Rigatoni

Sometimes, bolognese can be too tomato-pasty. Other times, it’s overloaded with ground meat. Consider Cornelly’s pork-based, just-right version the bowl that Goldilocks would gulp like there’s no tomorrow.

The Mothership

Beam us right up. This sausage pie starts out with tasty warmth from fennel seed, and is made even more exciting by smoky scamorza and paper-thin shavings of red onion.

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

Hornet Honey

If we had a nickel for every pizza with pepperoni and hot honey in this city, well, we wouldn’t have enough to fund one of them. But we’d still have a lot of nickels jingling around our pockets. Every element of spice has a softness to balance it out—pepperoni has pineapple, and chili has honey. It’s a near-perfect pie.

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

3 Cheese

Meet the greatest white pizza in town. The thing has enough sticky fontina to cancel school if it were a layer of snow, and yet the crust still stands up well to such a thick blanket of dairy.

photo credit: Brooke Fitts

Chocolate Chunk Cookie

You didn’t come to Cornelly to not tack on a post-pizza-and-pasta cookie. This one has the ideal amount of chocolate involved if you appreciate a chunkless bite now and then, with a tender crunch along the perimeter and a middle that embodies the texture of cookie dough. Salt flakes take it over the top.