Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Pete’s Apizza
One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.
From the moment I first walked into Pete’s, I thought I had good grasp of its operating ethos—a sort of sloppy, garlic-breathed hug of New Haven, Italian-American traditions, with just enough refinement to appease the magazine-toting foodies. But with each subsequent visit to the Columbia Heights pizzeria, I realize just how wrong my initial impression was. I’ve come to see that Pete’s is actually a cool urban outpost dedicated to classic Italian/Mediterranean ways. Perhaps it has always been thus, and I was just bamboozled by the “Apizza” in Pete’s name. Whatever the concept, though, this operation turns out raised, crispy crusts with a slightly airy, slightly chewy crumb, which strike me as New Haven in style, even without the coal ovens. Pete’s may be more refined than its Connecticut cousins, but the pie parlor still aims for an honest homemade simplicity, which in our processed age has become a strange signifier of quality and class. I have no doubt that Pete’s has 2Amys in its sights.
Pete's Apizza, 1400 Irving St. NW, (202) 332-7383
Photo by Darrow Montgomery
11:06 am
Pete's is great-- I love having it in walking distance. Some of the antipasti specials can be wonderful (and good deals too). The pizza is fine, but has a long, long way to go before it can touch 2Amys IMHO.
11:54 am
I agree with Chris, but with much less enthusiasm. The antipasti specials are pretty good, while the pizza is the most overrated in the city. (For the purposes of this statement, I am assuming that everyone in their right mind rates jumbo slice as edible only in a technical sense; the opinions of drunk bridge-and-tunnelers are not relevant.)
4:23 pm
After moving here from NY, I was pretty bummed with the lack of a decent slice in DC. That jumbo slice thing is really the worst though. I have had some great pizza dining experiences, but after searching around, Pete's and Vace are my two favorite spots in town to grab a slice.