Seattle Restaurants: Place Pigalle in the Market and Serious Pie

Opinions please from those who have patronized one or the other or both of these establishments.

Thank you!

They're both Seattle institutions. Serious Pie is pretty casual and you can end up eating in the prep kitchen, which doesn't bother me one bit but may not be some people's thing.

Pigalle is elevated northwest cuisine with French inflections in a great location with gracious service.

If you like the style at Pigalle, you should also look at Zig Zag, Matt's at the Market and Steelhead Diner.

Opinions please from those who have patronized one or the other or both of these establishments.

 

Thank you!

We stopped at Serious Pie just last night & found it to be a bit expensive. They charge a 20% service charge upfront to cover gratuity, and their menu a bit pretentious. We went to Rocco's for slices & good beer.

I confess our private name for the place is "Pretentious Pie." "Nuff said.

I've been going to Place Pigalle since it was a longshoreman's dive bar with wax-covered Chianti bottle-candles on the tables and faded Collier's Magazine posters featuring smiling ladies in front of Lockheed Constellations on the walls. My first time there was on an icy night in the 1960s when some drunk went up to the jukebox, fed it some quarters and pushed the same two buttons again and again and again. My date and I feared we were in for hours of bad C&W music, but instead we listened to several replays of "Lili Marlene" being sung by Marlene Dietrich. That was the kind of place it was before it went mainstream.

The current Place Pigalle is pretty good; get a window table if possible. But there are lots and lots of excellent restaurants in downtown Seattle, with and without views.

We stopped at Serious Pie just last night & found it to be a bit expensive. They charge a 20% service charge upfront to cover gratuity, and their menu a bit pretentious. We went to Rocco's for slices & good beer.

Don't assume the 20% service charge covers gratuity. Seattle has a $15/hr minimum wage, BEFORE tips. Restaurants do all sorts of fees/charges/answers for this, because their labor costs went way up. Ivar's Salmon House did an across-the-board price hike and eliminated the tip line altogether. Some do a 2% fee. Some do a 20% fee plus tips. Some do a 20% fee or tips.