Seattle Times Hearts Independent Pizzeria; Seattle Weekly (Very) Into Brunswick & Hunt

In her latest review, Seattle Times critic Providence Cicero checks out Madison Park's Independent Pizzeria. A "puppy-eyed" 26-year-old named Joe Heffernan heads the kitchen, preparing what Cicero claims are "some of Seattle's best pies."

Each pizza is made to order using "astonishingly elastic dough" that's baked with "high-quality toppings." Cicero says the "thin, but not floppy-thin, crisp but not cracker-crisp" crust is what "sets this pizza apart."

Also, shareable salads and salumi plates, plus sweets like panna cotta with root beer gelée. The drink list includes root beer on tap and affordable wine. Three stars.

Over at Seattle Weekly, Nikki Sprinkle tucks in at Ballard's newish Brunswick & Hunt. She's a fan of the dining room's "clubby, rustic elegance" and likes the whole B&H package, describing is as "a restaurant for adults, thought out by adults" with a "complete vision realized."

Sprinkle says the kitchen team prepares "quality food flawlessly" with an exception: The fried chicken is not of the traditional Southern fried variety. It's moist, but "strangely rubbery" and has an "artificial texture and tasteless meat, with a skin that pops off like a shell." Moving on, there's one of the best quesos you may ever taste, fries that deserve to be copied, and Brussels sprouts so good they'll "whisk away your jaded air."