- Kelly O
- Natalie Delucchi and Lyss Lewis, living the pie dream.
It’s strange to eat pie while drinking, but it’s better than you’d expect. Even better than that, and even less expected: drinking a cocktail made of pie. Capitol Hill’s Pie Bar specializes in such drinkable desserts. Pie Bar’s “pietinis” are like the middles of your favorite pies mixed with booze, served in martini glasses dipped in a butter, sugar, and pastry flour concoction that identical twin owners Lyss Lewis and Natalie Delucchi call “crack.” I sat at the bar—the place was packed, not a table to be had—where I had a view of the hydraulic pie press and a row of fresh pies cooling, grandma-style, on a windowsill. The bar’s flagstone walls and chandeliers create the atmosphere of a tiny pie castle. I drank a pumpkin pietini ($11) while eating a buttery, melty slice of marionberry/strawberry/apple “Desserted Island” pie à la mode ($8). Maybe it was the vodka, or being served by twins, but simultaneously eating pie and drinking a pie cocktail was slightly dizzying. I felt possibly on the verge of existential thoughts, and definitely of wanting more pie.
Lyss, the former owner of Seattle Pie Company, showed me the pipe she designed to carry the aroma of pie from the bar’s oven to the street and the doorbell a neighbor installed in their pie pickup window. “We’ve both worked as general contractors,” she told me. “We did Pie Bar’s build-out ourselves. Check out the bathroom!” (Indeed, the bathroom is impressive—the smallest I have ever seen containing a chandelier.) I watched the bar’s flat-screen TV after Lyss told me she likes to play a mixture of baseball and Mr. Bean, but seeing only baseball, I accepted with some disappointment that she meant she alternates between the two.
