Berto G.
Yelp
My rating for this place is purposefully kind because I enjoy neighborhood places that throw tables out in the parking strip so that you can dine al fresco in a fairly informal atmosphere. More restaurants should do this and as the pandemic recedes, I hope to see more outdoor dining in our area.
We were looking for a place to be in the sun and drink, so here we landed. This was pretty much the end of us getting anything close to what we expected. P-22 clearly has the capacity to assemble decent food and provide excellent service. Unfortunately for my friend and I, we received neither of those things during our visit to P-22.
On the positive side - they do seem to have a clay pizza oven and the crust on the pizza tells me something good is possible here. We also had wine and cocktails.
Both were acceptable and no complaints other than being served a drink with lipstick all around the rim of the glass and a bug in it. The waiter put the drink down, said she was going to replace it and then walked away, leaving the insect infused delight on our table, along with the other dirty dishes from appetizers that sat on our table nearly the entire time of our wonderful visit despite my companion constantly piling, rearranging and pushing the dishes to more prominent and obvious spots in order to indicate that we would like them taken away.
This is sign number one that the service is really variable here. We sat for some twenty minutes with no food and empty drink glasses on the table while the waiter went inside and came back out six or seven times without checking on us. After about the fifth time, I started waiving when she was facing our direction. She chose to ignore us despite there not really being anything going on for about 10 minutes. Other tables occupied by older couples were hovered over. The service was so incredibly bad that we left there suspecting that we had done something to offend this young wait person. My friend and I are typically wild over-tippers and extremely kind with waitstaff because everyone should be and, having grown up around a lot of kitchens, I know what happens to a-hole customer food before it comes out. This made zero difference on this day.
After a marathon of mostly sitting, I inquired about the readiness of the pizza we had ordered about an hour prior and were told that it could be made ready in no time. OK, that's unsettling, but I'm ready to get out of here, so bring it on. The pizza arrives!! I haven't eaten pizza in a restaurant for over a year and this Italian American mutt is ready to fold some slices and experience the exquisite, smokey sensation of wood fired oven pizza in my mouth. Better yet, this one had eggplant on it, one of my favorite vegetables. Pizza lands on the table. Let's jus say the inch thick half slab of tasteless, mushy garbage on a pizza was not what I had in mind when I ordered a pizza with eggplant on it. I don't know what they did to it before putting it on the pizza and I'm betting no one there can tell you either. It did neither pizza nor eggplant any justice. The rest of the pizza was OK, I guess.
The "marinara" served to us appeared to be tomato puree straight out of a can. From what I can tell, nothing was added to it, no garlic, oregano or even salt. We had the distinct pleasure of experiencing this on multiple dishes including an appetizer - Baked? clams, in this case baby clams drenched in tasteless "marinara."
I would strongly encourage the owner or head chef of this restaurant to google Marinara Sauce, learn the basic ingredients, and make sure that whoever runs the kitchen on any given night knows what it is because whoever prepared the food on the night that we visited was not using a recipe or ingredients. Don't get me wrong, we all use canned products, but normally if we're going to eat them, we add things to them, we don't eat them straight out of a can. On that note, the clams with "marinara" came out at a temperature that would suggest the clams were cooked and then raw "M" sauce was dumped on them from that very can as they rolled out the kitchen door.
So, aside from atrocious service and completely mediocre food, this place is totally real and in West Seattle. I highly recommend that you avoid "Pee" as we now call it, on the nights when whoever that was in the kitchen is working.
