Ken’s Artisan Pizza, the longtime Southeast Portland restaurant originally spun off from Ken’s Artisan Bakery, was named the No. 3 pizzeria in America during a Manhattan ceremony from Italy’s Top 50 Pizza organization Tuesday.
Appearing in person to accept the award was chef Vince Krone; owner Peter Kost, who bought the pizzeria from longtime friend Ken Forkish in 2022; and Forkish himself, who flew in for the event from his Hawaii home.
“It’s surreal,” said Krone, as the trio ducked in for afternoon martinis at the famed Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel Wednesday. “I still don’t fully understand what happened.”
Besides Ken’s (304 S.E. 28th Ave.), two other Portland pizzerias landed on the Top 50 Pizza list for the United States: Apizza Scholls (4741 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.) at No. 20, and Nostrana (1401 S.E. Morrison St.) at No. 29. According to the Italian organization, rankings are derived from “a year of anonymous inspections of pizzerias located throughout the United States,” with pizza quality, wine and beer lists and customer service all taken into account.
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Portland tied with San Francisco and Miami for the city with the second-most pizzerias on the list after New York City, which had 10. Last year’s list included five Portland pizzerias, with Scottie’s Pizza Parlor and Lovely’s Fifty Fifty joining the trio retained on the 2023 edition.
Ken’s also was given a “Green Oven” award acknowledging the restaurant’s commitment to sustainability, the only pizzeria on this year’s list to receive the honor.
American pizzerias ranked in the top 15 are automatically eligible for the 100 Best Pizzerias in the World list, which will be announced Sept. 13 in Naples. As you might have guessed, pizzerias operating in the Neapolitan or neo-Neapolitan styles — with smaller pies baked hot and fast in wood-fired ovens, often using imported Italian ingredients — are well-represented on the list.
A pizza with arugula at Ken's Artisan Pizza.The Oregonian/2016
For Forkish, the honor was “like a lifetime achievement award, even though I’m not doing the work anymore,” he said. “And these guys keep making the pizzeria better.”
According to Kost, his commitment to Ken’s pizza quality dates back well before he took over the restaurant. The two first met as Forkish was opening his Ken’s Artisan Bakery on Northwest 21st Avenue, just up from Kost’s first restaurant, Lucy’s Table, in 2001. Kost was on hand to taste test some of Forkish’s earliest pizzas, and to tour the space that would eventually become Ken’s Artisan Pizza in 2006.
So after Forkish couldn’t make it to last year’s ceremony, when Ken’s landed at No. 11, Kost pestered him with text messages until he agreed to come this year.
“There’s a lot of history there,” Kost said. “Ken is a super guy, and I am the lucky recipient of that relationship. The team we’ve put together there with Ken’s foundation and Vince’s kitchen team has just been fantastic. From hospitality to food, it’s really hitting its stride.”
Back in 2019, Krone, a longtime Portland cook, was considering leaving the restaurant industry altogether before a friend tipped him off to a part-time job at Ken’s Artisan Pizza. After working a shift, Forkish offered him a job, but there was a problem: Krone and his wife were about to take off on a belated two-week Italian honeymoon, an admission that is “typically a job-offer killer,” Krone says.
Instead, Forkish told him the job would be there for him when he got back.
“We’ll wait for good people,” Krone recalls Forkish saying. “That was one of the nicest things I’d heard in a long time.”
Krone eventually worked his way up to head chef, though he still prefers “kitchen manager.”
During the pandemic, the Ken’s team baked 18-inch New York-style pies in the wood-fired oven and passed them to customers through the restaurant’s big sliding windows — with apologies to Apizza Scholls, probably my favorite pizza ever served in Portland. (Those larger format pies didn’t fit once Ken’s reopened for dine-in service in 2021, but over several visits since then, both before and after the sale, quality has remained high.)
A pizza being sliced at Ken's Artisan Pizza.The Oregonian/2016
If you think Ken’s Artisan Pizza has received high praise before, you’re not wrong. In January, travel website Big 7 Travel put together a list of the 50 best pizza restaurants in the world, naming Ken’s Artisan Pizza at No. 2.
But despite receiving widespread coverage, as we noted at the time, that list felt thrown together at random, including at least one error seemingly copied from a local food blog.
“The No. 2 in the world thing, no one believed it and no one should have taken that seriously,” Krone said. “When you read these things on the internet, you don’t know if it’s a bot writing it, or someone just sitting on their couch.”
According to Forkish, the Top 50 Pizza organization has a few things going for it that random Internet lists don’t.
“This is the first legitimate organization to rank pizzerias in the United States, and It’s an Italian organization, which gives them instant credibility in my book,” Forkish said. “They’re serious about it. And they’re not just looking at the pizza. They’re looking at service, wine list, and how you feel when you walk out the door.”
Still, the Big 7 Travel list and the widespread coverage it received caused Ken’s business to double overnight, Krone said, going from around 150 pizzas a night before Christmas 2022 to a whopping 300 after.
“When Ken retired, we made an unspoken promise that no matter, we wouldn’t backpedal on quality,” Krone said. “But if you do the math, 300 pizzas over five hours, 60 pizzas an hour. That’s a pizza each minute.”
In other words, Ken’s Artisan Pizza is already at capacity. Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Read more:
The 19 best dishes restaurant critic Michael Russell ate in 2021
This Portland pizzeria is No. 2 on a list of the world’s best pizzas (Big 7 Travel list)
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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