When the pizza comes out of the oven, the cooks cut through the yolks so the golden goodness runs all over the pie. Credit: Ashley Wong
When the pizza comes out of the oven, the cooks cut through the yolks so the golden goodness runs all over the pie.
When the pizza comes out of the oven, the cooks cut through the yolks so the golden goodness runs all over the pie. Ashley Wong

No serious conversation about comfort food can be had without a discussion of yolk lava.

Watching a punctured sunny-side-up egg melt into a bowl of bibimbap, or slowly flood a pan of shakshuka, or even just bless a piece of toast is one of the deepest gastronomic pleasures available to us.

And I believe the symbolism of a bright-yellow sphere suspended in a white cloud is not lost on sun-starved Seattleites. Even the word itself sounds warm, aligning nicely with its sense: “Yolk” goes all the way back to the proto-Indo-European root “ghel-,” meaning “to shine.”

There’s a whole lot of yolk lava happening around town, from the khachapuri at Dacha Diner to the steak tartare at the Walrus and the Carpenter, but my favorite recent examples can be found in two dishes cooked in the wood-fired oven at Mioposto: the Egg and Pancetta pizza, and the Baker.

Rich Smith is The Stranger's former News Editor. He writes about politics, books, and performance. You can read his poems at www.richsmithpoetry.com