Bluto's Pizza

A Review From My Porch

Some folks eat fish on Friday. Our family eats pizza. When we are on the Long Beach Peninsula we eat Bluto’s Pizza. We should be so lucky as to have Bluto’s in Gig Harbor. Bluto’s Philly-style pizza and calzone blows all other pizzas out of the water.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Astoria shopping. I’d intended to stop at a chain take-and-bake pizza shop and pick up pizzas to take back to Ilwaco with me. The thought of standing around while they put together my order, driving home, firing up the oven and cooking the pizzas one at a time sounded like more energy than I had left. “I’m calling Bluto’s when we get home,” I told my mother. You’ll never get an argument out of my mother when it comes to Bluto’s. And that’s what I did. In the time it took me to unload and put away the groceries and drive the three miles to Long Beach we had three hot-from-the-oven pizzas made to our specifications.

For years another pizza joint, which shall remain nameless, was about the only game in town when it came to pizza. The crust tasted like cardboard, the sauce was bland, and they used too much cheddar cheese. In the 1960s when pizza was still somewhat a novelty out here in the Wild West, we teenagers were just grateful to have something besides frozen pizza and a place to hang out and look at each other after basketball games. Other pizza places have come and gone, but the Long Beach Peninsula got a gem when Bluto’s opened.

Bluto’s pizza is so good that when the local Health Department held a dinner meeting guess whose food they asked for? Recommendations don’t come much higher than that. Bluto’s is an unpretentious restaurant where families can eat with the children and where everyone comes away full and happy. Tuckered out from a day playing or clamming on the beach? No problem. For a little extra, Bluto’s delivers. One Friday I was busy mowing the lawn before dinner. I had my granddaughter with me and the thought of stopping what I was doing, loading her into her carseat (which takes a college education to get all the straps properly fastened), driving to Long Beach, getting her out of the car, picking up the pizza and getting her back into the car made me more tired than I already was. Remedy? Simple, I called Bluto’s. Our pizza was at the front door in 30 minutes and I was done with the lawn.

Obviously many people come to the beach expecting to eat seafood and there’s plenty of it to be had, but if good Italian pizza or calzone, followed by cannoli, sounds good to the family, Bluto’s on the main drag of Long Beach can’t be beat. Besides, it’s only a short walk from there to the amusement rides or Marsh’s Free Museum to see Jake the Alligator Man.