Portable pizza finds home in Ballard

Excerpts from her blog,

All You Can Eat

Ballard doesn't need another pizza joint — as everyone who's watched the pizza proliferation there keeps telling me. But I'll bet even detractors will make an exception for Veraci Pizza (www.veracipizza.com), whose portable wood-fired pizza ovens make guest appearances at farmers markets and catering gigs all around town.

Four years ago, when I wrote about Veraci, their single hand-built unit was a big hit at the Ballard Sunday Farmers Market, and the fledgling company was a part-time labor of love for owners Marshall Jett (then a teacher at Hawthorne Elementary) and his wife and business partner, Errin Byrd-Jett (a regional recruiter for the Peace Corps). Today, Veraci Pizza involves three portable ovens, five full-timers (including Errin's sister, Krista), 20 on-call pizza crew members and a Ballard store that — if the pizza gods and the permitting departments are with us — they expect to remodel and open in August.

The shop, at 500 N.W. Market St., has a long-standing history as a pizza joint. Formerly a Domino's, it had a short-lived stint as Paradise Pizza. Seattle's gourmands will know it as that place directly across the street from Le Gourmand.

"We've been looking for a permanent location for three years," says Errin, who keeps the books and hoists a pizza peel with the best of them, hitting the road when duty calls.

"We wanted a place with parking that was close to home. We want to ride our bikes to work," she says. Proximity to home will also allow her to keep a close eye on both Veraci and the couple's 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, who's been "working" in the family business since she was knee-high to a 50-pound sack of flour.

Marshall couldn't be more excited about the prospect of opening a permanent pizza joint, where plans involve major improvements like landscaping, a trellised deck, booth seating and the installation of a new oven — he sold the one that came with the shop.

"We're trying to get a beer and wine license," says Marshall. He hopes to eventually offer Manny's Pale Ale and Woodinville wines to go with salads, gelato and, of course, their signature pizzas and rotating specials, sold by the quarter-pie slice ($4-$4.75) or whole pie ($16-$19), and made with fine local ingredients.

As for that proliferation of pizzerias in Ballard? Marshall — a New Yorker whose college town boasted 10 pizzerias on a single block — has this to say about that: "I welcome everyone who wants to do it. It's an amazing food." And if you can't wait till August to get your hands on a slice, you can look for Veraci at farmers markets on Sunday (Ballard, Fremont, Mercer Island), Thursday (Bellevue) and Friday (Phinney Ridge), and now in Bend, Ore., where Marshall's brother Cameron has taken the Veraci Pizza show on the road.

What's up with the Hut?

If you've been wondering what's up with Seattle's Malay Satay Hut (212 12th Ave. S., Seattle, 206-324-4091, www.malaysatayhut.com), which has been shuttered for three months, you're not alone. I recently stopped by at what would normally be a busy lunch hour to find the storefront looking pretty gloom-and-doomy.

A sign on the front door read, "Kitchen Remodeling, Please Contact Redmond Store," though there didn't appear to be anything going on in there at all.

And when I asked some neighboring shopkeepers what the story was at Malay — a Seattle Asian-food favorite since its 1997 debut — I heard everything from "Who knows?" to variations on the "Business had gone downhill, and they were too busy with their other restaurants" (in Redmond and Portland) to do anything about it.

Then, last week, I got ahold of owner Sam Yoo, who spoke to me by cellphone from his original Malay, where he said he was cleaning up in advance of reopening. He explained that personnel issues caused him to close the restaurant, and mentioned, not incidentally, that he'll be returning to cook there himself, as will his wife, Jessy.

"I'm not going to lose my customers. I've got to be the chef here and bring back order," he told me.

Anyway, seeing Sam in the kitchen here in Little Saigon will go a long way toward quelling my fears that the Seattle Malay had gone downhill. The last time I ate my gotta-have-it dish, fiery sambal squid infused with the intense flavors of belachan (fermented shrimp paste) — ordered with a side of grilled roti canai, of course — it wasn't fiery or intensely flavored at all, it was just "eh."

The restaurant is now open for dinner only, nightly from 4 to 10 p.m.

This material has been edited for print publication

Nancy Leson's blog excerpts appear Wednesdays. Reach her at 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com