The Beacon Pub was a dive. I never went there, but everyone who did agrees. “That place was a dive,” a friend reports. “It was not a dangerous dive, more like a neighborhood hole that didn’t care. Tacky paper cutout beer signs, slightly greasy, shaggy dudes pulling tabs.” My friend saw bands there from time to time, and he liked it very much.
The Beacon Pub is gone. In its place is Bar del Corso. Bar del Corso is not a bar and definitely not a dive; it’s a place for wood-fired pizza, made with local/seasonal ingredients. (On the specials chalkboard recently: prosciutto and melon with “Beacon Hill king figs.”) It’s light and airy, with hardwood floors and windows all across the front. Bar del Corso does have a bar on one side of the room, serving Italian wines, aperitivi like cherry-basil limonata or a Cynar spritz, and beers on tap including Moretti and organic Fish Tale Pale Ale. In a symbolic and possibly sentient act, the imported-from-Italy tiled pizza oven broke the sidewalk while being moved in.
Down the street, you can eat home-style Filipino food at brightly lit Inay’s (and maybe catch an amazing one-person drag show done by the server), you can get really good catfish at a Shell station, you can go to family Mexican restaurant Baja Bistro (or to its everyone-welcome-especially-gays-on-Wednesdays bar). On the same block as Bar del Corso—where you’ll find tidy houses with peeling paint and unlandscaped yards—there’s also Yoga on Beacon. It’s happening, and it cannot go unsaid: gentrification. (The owners of the Beacon Pub went looking for cheaper rent; they opened a new bar called Orcas Landing—reportedly a lot less divey—in Hillman City.)
And people—a lot of people—have been waiting, apparently, for a place like Bar del Corso. There’s a 45-minute wait for a table on a Thursday night at 7:00 p.m., and people will be crammed in by the front door for most of the night. (While the service is generally very nice here, the woman running the list—they don’t take reservations—informs you of the delay in a manner that makes you feel like she wishes you’d just go away.) Neighbors run into other neighbors, little kids jump up and down. The ambient din won’t begin to subside until after nine. Jerry Corso—the owner, and a beloved and respected figure in Seattle cooking, with behind-the-scenes experience at Cafe Lago, Harvest Vine, and Campagne, among other places—comes by to sympathize, briefly, and see if you want a drink. He’s not working the room, he’s just working—all night, he’ll be hand-tossing pizzas, clearing tables, carrying a broom, doing whatever needs to be done.
A guy from New York and his friend who lives here, downtown, are waiting out on the sidewalk. They’ve eaten Neapolitan-style pizza from Vancouver to San Francisco. The New Yorker hasn’t been to Delancey in Ballard yet, but he’s heard about it; he derides Di Fara in Brooklyn as overpriced, and says the place on 11th and Howard in San Francisco is the best. He lets it be known that he has a chef friend who knows Jerry (of course); the word “foodie” is deployed. These guys wouldn’t have been caught dead anywhere near the Beacon Pub.
These guys end up sitting at the table next to us. The New Yorker takes photos of their food. They devour a special, grilled octopus with borlotti beans ($9)—I had this a week before, and while the beans were a bit underdone, the octopus was pliant and tasty, with nice charred edges, and the rich, tomatoey sauce was excellent. Our neighbors save their plate with its leftover sauce to push their pizza crusts through.
Meanwhile, we’re eating a ramekin of baccalà ($10)—a dip made of salt cod, potato, garlic, and Parmigiano—and it’s creamy, warm, and fully delicious smeared on grilled bread. Clams ($7.50) are tiny and tender and a little spicy-hot, though the broth in the bottom isn’t worth sacrificing bread for. A beet and apple salad with frisée and hazelnuts ($8) is good, but a gourmand would knock it for not transcending the sum of its parts. I’m wishing I’d gotten the heirloom tomato one again—a huge portion of varicolored beauty, sprinkled liberally with sea salt, with a big blob of oozing burrata ($9). Another thing I’d eat over and over: the suppli al telefono ($5), which must mean snacks to eat while talking on the phone—I love you, Italians—and translates to an especially great version of the fried rice balls with mozzarella in the middle that you get at East Coast pizzerias.
So how was the pizza? The New Yorker says it needs more salt in the crust; same with the octopus, that needed a little more salt, too. Overall, “Pretty good,” though, he declares. It would be impolite to disagree with an expert, so I emphasize that our pizza—the salame piccante ($12), with Alps salami and roasted peppers, on a base of sparing tomato sauce, with mozzarella and grana cheese—had saltier toppings, and that must account for why ours was, in a word, stellar. I don’t use that word; I don’t want to sound like a jackass. And I don’t say that the saltiness had an unusual complexity, with notes of spice and fat and acid and roastiness all hitting your tongue, and I don’t say that I thought the crust was as close to perfect as you can get on this planet—even when I had the funghi pizza ($12.50) that they had, which was also really, really good. I don’t share the calculations I’m doing in my head about the pizzas here being bigger—not quite as exquisite, but definitely way bigger—than the ones at Delancey, and how this pizza is, I think, tied for second-best in the city with the Independent Pizzeria.
Dessert is ordered. There’s a peach crisp ($7) that’s all melting-together sweet goodness, and I burn my hand on its little pan even though Jeff the waiter warns me not to. Panna cotta with blueberries ($6) is smooth and simple and just right. And Jerry Corso sends out a dish of house-made stracciatella gelato ($6). Does he somehow know I’m writing a review? I don’t know. The New Yorker, who was at pains to find Jerry and introduce himself as that other chef’s friend, doesn’t get any.
We eat as much as we possibly can of the ice cream, because it is magnificent, with the thinnest bits and pieces of chocolate all through it. There’s a lot left. Do the New Yorker and his friend want the rest of it? Yes, they do, and they don’t mind if they use our spoons. Jeff comes by and sees what’s happening and laughs. “Now that’s Italian,” he says. 
There may be a lot of good food in the Northwest, but there is no good pizza.
@1 Agreed, this area can do lots of things right, beer and burgers being two of them, but pizza is not a PacNoWe strength.
Bar del Corso is seriously delicious — I’m soooooooooo happy they’ve set up shop!
Ok, I was gonna let the Beacon Pub bit slide (sigh), but when you start dropping jewels about the catfish at Shell you automatically catalyst the gentrification of acquired taste of cheap “cuisine”. They’re just gonna raise the price (or make it shittier) now. Mums, pls.
As a long time Beacon Hill resident (eleven years this month!) I’ll just say this: As long as it’s not another Culinary Communion, I’m fine with it. But if they displaced the darling old Beacon Tavern for some flash-in-the-pan poseraunt that culminates in the chef/owner’s emotional breakdown, I don’t know what….
“…little kids jump up and down.”
“…big blob of oozing…”
You make it sound so wonderful; like a really pricey, if gourmet, Chuck E. Cheese’s.
I am soo glad they displaced the old very old Beacon Hill Pub that was awful at best. A decent bar that serves good food is the reason Bar de Corso is a success. Its a needed hangout on the Ave and hopefully a few more will come along. I am meaning to try the new Thai cafe down the street.
All the other big neighborhoods are full of exciting restaurants these days and finally little Beacon Hill gets a “taste” of some good food.
I’ve been a Beacon Hill resident for 11 years and a Seattlelite for 59 yrs.
The “clam pizza” he’s making in the photos was absolutely delicious.
And I normally hate clams.
Beacon hill has been the spot I would Invest as its central and nice and surrounded in diversity. A good pizza is not hard to make but a good pizza is hard to find as is a good burger and Fry’s? as is good Mexican food?
all of Seattle has improved greatly in all areas and many many good places have opened and many of the re-entering earths orbit choke and pukes “Serious Dives” have even cleaned it up and done better thanks to the weekly reports from the health department that were printed in the news paper?
around 2000 those people digging food out of the dumpster were doing so as the food was not worth paying for?
I think the success of Bar del Corso might be good anecdotal proof that Beacon Hill is ready and able to support more businesses like this. So come on all of you young entrepreneurs and creative developers! Beacon Hill is full of empty store fronts waiting for new businesses. I’ve lived here for over 12 years now. What is taking so long? Heck, virtually two blocks surrounding our new light rail station are just empty blocks. What happened to the urban village we dreamed of? Residents up here are hungry for new businesses. Come make it happen!!
Our beloved “World Pizza” just reopened its doors in the ID on S. King street. Same ovens, sauce and original Space Needle sofa!!
They have a kickass happy hour too! $1.50 Rainiers and $1 off slices– screaming deal!
“Another thing I’d eat over and over: the suppli al telefono ($5), which must mean snacks to eat while talking on the phone—I love you, Italians—and translates to an especially great version of the fried rice balls with mozzarella in the middle that you get at East Coast pizzerias.”
Er, no, it doesn’t. It refers to telephone wires suggested by the strands of melted cheese that stretch between two halves when you pull one apart.
“Beacon Hill is full of empty store fronts waiting for new businesses. I’ve lived here for over 12 years now. What is taking so long?”
Almost all of the commercial property on Beacon Hill is owned by old and/or unimaginative peole. When they die off or sell off, things may pick up. Until then, what you see is what you get.
bears repeating: gentrification.
At the risk of affronting present company: no one bends a gender quite like a Filipino/a.
Author and commenters: how are we defining gentrification here?
I live on Beacon Hill, and I happen to live on a block where every house is owned by the residents.
In fact, in my census tract (WA King County – 104.01), owner-occupied homes make up 74% of housing, far higher than the Seattle city average – 48%.
It is a higher minority population–I hope we’re not confusing brown populations with renter-occupied populations…
Unless I don’t understand how you’re using the term.
Bar del Corso is great, btw. Love the pizza.
There is nothing wrong with having a nice restaurant in a neighborhood that has longed for a meeting place with good food. Gentrification can be seen as a positive or a negative, and I think there is plenty of room for improvement on Beacon Hill. There were already changes before Bar del Corso: a couple of coffee shops and a yoga studio. And these things have been great for the neighborhood.
Bar del Corso is not trying to be a downtown, upmarket restaurant. Their prices are great for a neighborhood spot. The space is nice but not super fancy. Don’t let the Italian names for dishes fool you.
As a side note, the folks at The Beacon Pub did not move because the rent was too high or because it had increased. They and the landlord decided it was time for a change.
Jerry works his butt off to make good food for the neighborhood – he is a working class, neighborhood guy and drives an old beater truck!
You could have written about the Bar del Corso without slaming the old Pub. If you are going to write about The Beacon Pub, get your facts from people who actually went there, not thoes who made quick judgements based on superficial things. They did NOT have pull tabs for starters! Many of us who enjoy the Pizza still miss the Old Pub too! I am not sure about all these new ‘neighbors’ who talk ill of others. Calling us ‘unimaginative’ and just waiting for us to die off.,,, Not very neighborly.