Northlake Tavern & Pizza House

After 30+ years as a customer I made what will likely be my last visit today. The quality of food has been declining for years. It has just now got to the point where it is so bad and cooked so poorly that I would rather eat a pizza hut pizza.
They have a challenge here that is hard to overcome. Their pizza takes a long time to cook. Customers then complain that it takes too long and get upset. In turn it appears they have started taking shortcuts to try to cook faster and it just ends up being an inedible pizza. If they would just cook the pizza the required amount of time they could win some of their loyal customers back.
Service is about as bad as you can get anywhere. It never really has been very good there. It is not about the wait for the pizza. After 30 years I realize it takes 45 minutes to cook their pizza correctly. The servers are just not pleasant at all. They lack any personality and have no interest in making sure your needs are met or even making sure you have a drink.
When I first started eating at The Northlake you were lucky to get a seat on a weekend night. Weeknights and lunch were also very busy. This place is now a ghost town. You can pretty much be seated immediately any time, any day, including Husky game day.
Very sad as Seattle is severly lacking in quality pizza places.

Yum, the pizza is great. The service is friendly. It gets kind of hot inside, and know that your pizza will take about forty minutes to make. I can’t give them less than five stars. No one in our group would shut up about how good the food was.

I was here several years ago and the pizza was really good. What happened here? I couldn’t tell you, but I was back in town for a conference last week and brought a couple friends here for lunch. Wow, what a mistake and a total embarrassment. The pizza was one of the most disgusting piles of slop I’ve ever eaten. This did not look or taste like a pizza at all, it was more like a big, sloppy mess of cheese and greasy meats piled on what looked and tasted like frozen crust that looked fresh off the factory assembly line that made it inedible. Out of politeness one of my friends managed to say «well it’s ok maybe it just isn’t cooked enough». Trust me, you could have cooked this slop another hour and not improved it. Our server Mike was really good, I must say, and deserves to be working in a much better establishment than this slop hole. Avoid this place at all costs, I can’t speak for any of the other items on the menu because all I’ve had here is the pizza, which deserves 0 stars. Price for a large combo was over $ 45, most of which went in the rubbish. I was still paying for it the next day and couldn’t stay off the toilet. I’ll give it an award for being the worst pizza I have ever had.

Took a group of 6 from out of town. Fast service. Pizza took a little while but it was worth it. Fun place. A+ pizza. Cheap beer.

Not a fan of their pizza. It’s one of those puffy style pizzas that mostly bread leaving you feel stuffed after one unsatisfying slice.

I just sent this to the business, but I see in the reviews that I’m not the only person who’s had similar problems, so I am posting it here to validate those opinions as well.
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I lived in Seattle until 2002 and Northlake was a frequent part of my dining experience. It was damn good pizza! Business took me away from Seattle for some years, but we recently moved back to the Puget Sound and I had a chance to share Northlake Tavern pizza with my wife. We stopped in last Wednesday and ordered a medium pepperoni and black olive. What we got was different from anything I remember getting at Northlake before.
First, the pizza was overdone on the top: all the cheese was dark brown. The visible surface of the crust was dark brown. Hmmmm… Well, overcooking happens on a busy night. No matter. We then noticed that the olives were chopped, tapenade style, rather than sliced. I don’t recall that having been the case the last time I ordered pizza at Northlake, but maybe I didn’t order black olive. I’ve never had chopped olives on an olive pizza.
It just kept getting worse:
* the pepperoni was sliced very thick, giving it the consistency of salami rather than crisp little slices of pepperoni (nor was it terrifically tasty pepperoni)
* the pizza was greasier than a Domino’s pizza (I didn’t know you could even do that)
* the crust under the topping was extra thick, rubbery, and kind of solid. On closer examination, it turned out to have a dough strip in the middle! You can stand a fork up in the dough but it wasn’t fully cooked. (Think of the consistency of a double layer of thick pie crust that’s been taken out of the oven 6 – 8 minutes too early and you’ll have it.)
I heated up the last two slices of leftover pizza tonight and it’s still no better than it was. I can’t even finish the topping. It’s all going in the trash.
I know that things can change in 14 years, particularly in the restaurant business, but this is unacceptable. Serving greasy, rubbery, overcooked-​on-​top-​but-​undercooked-​on-​the-​bottom pizza is just not worth a dime. Please tell me that someone had just gotten fired and was doing bad pizzas intentionally that night, because I hate to think that you’re knowingly serving food this bad.
The service was acceptable, décor was still nice, selection of beer on tap was fun, but the food was terrible. I might come there again, but we’re not ordering pizza. You serve fried chicken, maybe?
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When we stopped in here, and we saw the prices, we expected that we were in for one of the best pizzas of all time.
Far from it.
We ordered their famous house pizzas, known as the «combo» and the «logger». After taking what over 40 minutes for what seemed to be a completely dead restuarant (now we know why), we were brought an under cooked, over topped pile of swill. I am not kidding you folks, you could still see the strings of cheese not completely melted in the center of the pie. And on top of it, there were so many mushrooms the pie was swimming in water/​grease.
Nothing about the toppings screamed «unique» at all. The only thing unique about it, is how much grease they can pile on one pie. They claimed to have had their «own recipe» for pepperoni, yet it appeared to be just a thick cut, cheap version (possibly hormel). The «logger» was somewhat more edible, but they also appeared to be using some sort of hormel style Canadian bacon (cheap).
And last but not least, the crust. Don’t even get me started on the crust. It was tasteless cardboard like and hard, and what appeared to be frozen dough. In fact, I would place a bet that it was frozen dough, seeing as how no homemade pizza dough in the WORLD could handle the amount of toppings piled on it.
Overall, my point being; I don’t mind eating cheap products, when the price is cheap. This establishment charges top price, for cheap product. Highway robbery. I don’t recommend this place to anybody.

Still utilizing the pre-​fab crust & cold, soggy toppings as they did 30-​years ago I see. Same sh*t but with a different smell now.
Too bad

Not exactly my fave. I think it’s cool that you can take pizzas to go (unbaked) but it sucks that the pizzas are so saturated with toppings that the crust isn’t sufficient to support them and doesn’t get baked all the way. Also, they’re a bit overpriced for this kind of experience (I guess it covers the cost of the toppings?). I was expecting to be wowed by a pizza that’s more than $ 20.
The people who work here are super nice and hilarious though :)
Maybe next time I’ll order a simple cheese or pepperoni pizza instead of a logger.

Loved this place growing up but the waitstaff are bitter and outwardly rude. Not funny diner rude, paddle faster I hear banjo music mental disorder rude. The glaring waitstaff should be in the back chopping pizza toppings but they probably shouldn’t be around sharp objects. Gee guys, why not hire some nice college students to wait tables before you piss off the wrong customer?
PS– there’s a reason why there’s no prices on their web menu (hint: $ 42 for a large combo).

Honestly the worst pizza I’ve ever had and it’s over priced. I’d rather have eaten totinos. At least it is crispy and more complex than a pile of soggy kleenex like dough.

I can’t believe I’ve lived so near this place for so long and haven’t experienced the amazingness until now. Time to make up for lost time.
In the midst of all the hip bars in Seattle, it can be hard to find a chill place like this. Sure, all those hipster spots are cool in their own right, but this place is so laid back and really feels like a neighborhood bar. It got really crazy after the husky game finished, so this place definitely feels the UW love.
The pizza here is effin delicious and piled HIGH with toppings, and I love how they tell you on the menu how much each size weighs. Two friends and I ordered a medium pizza and were absolutely destroyed afterward. They don’t screw around here. I can definitely recommend the combo and zesty chicken pizzas – so good! They’ve got a pretty good beer selection and I like that they have Seattle Cider Co here as well.
The only complaints I have about this place are that the food does take quite a while (which is understandable given how hefty the pizzas are) and that the bathroom stalls are ridiculously tiny. As in, if you’re over 5’5″, your knees will be humping the door.
Other than that, though, I’m so pleased with this place and will definitely be back to stuff my face with pizza again. Mmmm.

I had high hopes for this place but was a little let down. The food takes a long time to come out, and the place gets SO packed, especially on game nights, with not enough seating. Personally, I wasn’t thrilled about the pizza. We had a large Combo. I guess I’m more traditional and being an East Coast girl (used to NY style pizza and such) I was a little put off by the THICK pepperoni. Sounds weird, I know, but they really were unusually thick slices. Not to mention that it was very expensive for a casual pizza joint. Paid just over $ 50 for one large pizza, 2 beers, and a coke. I won’t be going back.

I don’t care to write one star reviews but my experience here was deplorable. Sure, there are old school cartoons on the walls but a nice view isn’t worth worth a large bill, crappy food and mediocre service.
We got a medium pizza, just mushroom and tomatoes. There seemed to be a pound of mushrooms, unsalted with no flavor. The tomatoes were full sandwich slices, cold mealy and raw. They were placed on the pizza after it was cut, so when you took a slice, they just fell off. the crust was dense and floury, the kind you have to chew for a while. The cheese didn’t taste like anything, though it did feel like cheese.
I also got chicken strips. They weren’t breaded, and were cut very thinly like the kind they microwave at subway. They definitely seemed like they were just thawed and thrown on a plate.
The service wasn’t horrible just silent and inattentive. Also, this whole, it’s expensive because it’s heavy is BS. I can get two pounds of Chinese food for seven bucks. I might have a heart attack but I’ll do it with an extra fifty in my pocket.

This was one of the worst pizza experiences I’ve ever had. We ordered 2 pizza for $ 80 dollars and they were flat out gross. The crust was wet tasted like it wasn’t even cooked. I’ve been here before and I recommended this pizza to a lot of people and it was so bad people preferred Digorino. Sad day for Northlake. Ewwww

Best pizza ever!!! Well worth the $ and drive. Just gave it 4 stars because we weren’t too keen on the server who constantly had to step out & take a smoke break.

Good pizza, but undercooked. Takes a long while to receive food, though waiter mentioned this would be the case. Regardless, the pizza arrived and was cold. Probably left out for a while.
Service was questionable. A little grumpy, to say the least.
Ordered a large half meat eaters and half Italian special. Thick crust but doughy.
The meat eaters was a little better than the Italian.
Italian pizza has cold sliced tomatoes on top, which make the rest of the pizza hard to eat.
We also ordered Mug root beer from the tap, but it came out quite flat and watered down.
Plates were paper and the napkins are thin. Plastic table cloths and a lack of music/​tv volume made the experience feel quite cheap.
Overall the pizza was okay and quite filling but nothing really left a great impression.

This place has been around for decades and I can’t say much has changed in those decades – the lighting and interior décor certainly haven’t! It’s like you’re in a giant 1980s deep basement man cave, inhabited by someone who loves UW sports and whose taste in art skews toward editorial cartoons in newspapers. They definitely have a specific clientele.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is the basic approach to making pizzas; read: make them big and heavy and put more ingredients on them than most other pizza places put on five pizzas combined. Seriously, these things are like edible manhole covers.
The Lunch special is the way to go – a personal 3-​topping pie with a simple green salad for $ 10. And the personal pie gets the same treatment as the bigger ones: the toppings will be abundant! (The «tomato» topping means thin slices of cold tomatoes on the top, a Northwest thing that I am not a fan of… ergo, I don’t order it, wink.)
The menu on the whole is pretty no frills… you won’t find any trendy ingredients, but then again, if you’re coming here, you’re not looking for a post-​modern haute cuisine pizza and salad chased down by a Belgian witbier or whatever.

Northlake Tavern features a uniquely dense and somewhat gut-​traumatizing pie that is strangely alluring. I get the craving for their pepperoni about once a year, so I gather some male friends up for emotional support and make the trek. It takes an unreasonably long amount of time to cook this type of pizza, so adjust expectations accordingly.
While the food is always good, the place is long overdue for some cosmetic upgrades. The tables and table cloths are literally falling apart at the seems. The bathroom is completely ghetto. The background music is beyond bad… Goo Goo Dolls? Xtreme? James Taylor.(points gun at own head). So, hey, a few negatives for sure, but I keep coming back. Must be the large pepperoni and pitcher of Manny’s Pale Ale.

I used to come in years ago and this place was great. I don’t know what the hell happened. I came in a couple weeks ago and the prices, already fairly high, have been jacked big time, like you’re paying $ 23 for a small pie. The waitress dropped menus and asked if I wanted anything to drink, so I said let me look at the menu a minute. Once I was ready she and her coworker proceeded to completely ignore me. I just got up and left.
Screw you guys. I don’t know if you’re trying to run this place into the ground or what (and given you had a lot of bros and kids there you’re not doing a good job of that if that’s your intent), but I can’t support a restaurant that thinks they need to show somebody up like that for no good reason.