Stephanie Frieze Knows Her Pizza Pies!

Above: My hungry relative peruses the menu with great anticipation at Bluto's Pizza as another restaurant fan and customer (background) waits to pick up their order. Photo copyright 2008 by Mizu Sugimura.

"In Your Neighborhood" blogger Stephanie Frieze has my vote for her timely recommedation (A Review From My Porch, Saturday, July 19) to stop by Bluto's Pizza when visiting the Long Beach peninsula.

My husband and I were in the area last weekend in connection with our first visit to the Finnish American Festival in Naselle, WA over the weekend of July 25-27.

Above: Cheerful black and white checkboard floor
decorates the section of the restaurant where
we were seated at Bluto's Pizza last Friday afternoon.

Thanks to friends who have a home in Nahcotta where I have stayed and blogged about before, my spouse and I could enjoy both venues during a quick three day, two night getaway in our gas-friendly Toyota Prius. Thank you Stephanie - for posting this very excellent and welcome recommendation about Bluto's just days before week this trip!

I couldn't be more pleased! We got to Bluto's on Friday afternoon after a full-day of traveling beginning with a drive down to Costco in Warrenton, OR; a brief stop at Seaside, OR (where we had celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary twenty one years ago) and back to Washington State and Friday afternoon's festivities at the Finnish Festival!

While we ate a quick snack of chicken teriyaki, noodles and sour cream cake at the Finnish Festival, after a full day of driving Hubby was more than ready to dive into a hearty pizza which was more than fulfilled by his decision to split a tasty medium sized pizza (one half taco/one half chicken garlic) with his wife.

The pizza at Bluto's Pizza is definitely well-worth a stop as Stephanie recommends if you are staying in the Long Beach area. However, should you choose to eat-in the restaurant as we did, bringing your own heavier weight Chinet-type paper plate is well advised - as the quality of paper plates we were given to hold our pizza slices was unfortunately extremely thin. The moisture from just one single piping hot slice of pizza fresh from the oven was more than enough to put a good sized hole in the bottom of my serving plate even before I could finish off the first delicious slice.

Below: Yes, the spouse looks skeptical - but this picture was taken before he took the first bite of the yummy taco/chicken garlic pizza we ordered at Bluto's. By the time we left the restaurant he was all smiles! Photo copyright 2008 by Mizu Sugimura.