The wood-fired oven, and savvy staff, at this Tacoma hotspot hasn’t skipped a beat

The Blistered Hungarian Peppers in their chive oil bath, subtly prickled with heat and soothed by the memory of cheese melting into ground sausage, was just as memorable as I remembered.

I first relished this now-iconic dish it at the Wooden City bar in early 2020. It’s a comforting combination that manages to be both familiar and fresh, the edible personification of Jon Green and Abe Fox’s approach to cooking, to drinking and to hospitality. Do it well, don’t do it up.

Yet their restaurant — just a couple years old with a younger sister in Spokane that opened last year, pandemic be damned — feels celebratory. Not because you’re over-spending for the sake of celebration but because the food is good, every day of the week.

A shallow bowl of lamb bolognese arrives not twirled into a pristine spiral but layered in a generous pile, as a home cook who had spent all of Sunday simmering her red sauce might present her masterpiece. The tagliatelle here, though, is housemade, and crispy shallots seem frivolous for the amateur. A beet ravioli differs from more persnickety versions that painstakingly infuse macerated beets into the pasta dough: Wooden City’s pillows are instead filled with miniature cubes of the vivacious root vegetable, surrounded by a goat cheese sauce with little mountains of pistachio butter, a tear of basil and more beets.

Both Green and Fox grew up working in their family’s restaurants, progressing in adulthood to Michelin-starred restaurants. But as Green explained to me last spring, when the restaurant was operating as a to-go-only operation in those early days of the pandemic, you either become obsessed with tweezer cuisine or you pine to “make food that people really want to eat.”

“We serve chicken wings and Caesar salads,” said Green. “We just pay attention to the details.”

That they do.

I insisted we order one of the sides — that section of the menu usually tossed into the bottom corner like a lost sock near the hamper but never in it — because at Wooden City, the sides benefit from the super-hot wood-fired oven, from which some of the South Sound’s best pizzas also emerge. It being summer, the green beans won, enhanced by slivers of shiitake mushrooms and ample garlic aioli. (A winter visit featured charred broccoli.)

Our server recommended the Caesar, and its croutons. Buttery they were indeed, and straightforward but satisfying this salad was. These thoughtful touches — of how to enjoy food without overcomplicating it — proceed to the burrata, where heirloom tomatoes are either cherry or chunked, not sliced so as to require a knife. The star here is the bread pudding underneath it all.

“It could be the simplest thing,” said Fox last spring, preparing for the future of bottled cocktails, which had just been approved by the state liquor board for emergency support to restaurants. (To-go alcohol is now legal in Washington through July 2023.) Above all, he continued, “It should be quality. People should be providing not just a quality experience but the quality of product you want to have again and again.”

Normally I would never return to a restaurant for the burrata. I can cut tomatoes at home, thank you very much. But it’s not every day I bake savory bread pudding, and I don’t have a wood-fired oven.

Drinks follow a similar tack to the kitchen, relying not on labor-intensive housemade syrups with a shelf-life but simply good ingredients. The Manhattan uses Buffalo Trace bourbon, a combination of Cocchi Rosa and Carpano Antica — two classic Italian fortified wines — and I love that you can order on-menu a Last Word, that divine classic of equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, Luxardo maraschino and lime. House specialties are understandable for the occasional cocktail drinker but nonetheless worthwhile for the nerds among us.

The menu is equipped for a completely shared-plate meal or a traditional starter-entree scenario, whether for a pepperoni pie with hot peppers and honey or the Tavern Burger and fries, an under-$40 bottle of house wine and poached shrimp with cocktail sauce. The only catch: Reservations are basically required on weekends, and often at prime time on weekdays.

The food is that good, but what keeps people coming back to Wooden City — in Tacoma and in their still-fresh but highly-followed Spokane restaurant — must also be credited to the service and the experience.

Wooden City was one of my favorite places in Tacoma pre-pandemic. It not only persevered but also proved that if you do things right, no matter the circumstance, you do things well. That’s worth celebrating.

▪ Value: expected — $100+ for a couple to share two starters, an entree and a pizza, plus two cocktails

▪ Quality: excellent — handmade pasta and pizza, carefully prepared and well-executed menu, much of it from a wood-fired oven, with service to match

▪ Atmosphere: energetic but comfortable, suited for singles at the bar, double-dates and even dinner with parents (especially outside), which is hard to find with such good food

▪ Returnability: From bar to table, the prosecution rests.

WOODEN CITY TACOMA

▪ 714 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253-503-0762, woodencitytacoma.com

▪ Daily 4-10 p.m.

▪ Details: New American anchored by wood-fired pizza and handmade pastas, plus cocktails and burgers

▪ Seating: table, bar and outdoor available

▪ Reservations: recommended

This story was originally published July 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.