Editor’s note: This week and next, we’re counting down our favorite new Portland restaurants of 2023. At No. 7: No Saint, a new pizzeria worth knowing about, even in this pizza-mad town.
Visit most mid-sized cities in America, and you’ll find at least one buzzy restaurant with good pizza and wine, places designed less for Friday-night takeout than a proper night on the town (with prices to match).
That Portland has several such restaurants could explain why No Saint has flown a little under the radar, at least for me. But the former pop-up from Gabriella Casabianca and Anthony Siccardi is worth knowing about, even in this pizza-mad town.
No Saint lies on the Lovely’s Fifty Fifty side of the pizza universe, embracing seasonal produce and funky cheeses; those are the only places in town I’ve seen taleggio on a pizza, here as a pungent cream topping for a purple potato pie. There’s a rusticity here that lets you know the restaurant is real: A salad of rough-chopped radishes and apples served on mismatched vintage plates (good); thick-cut garlic retaining a punch of rawness under a plain pizza’s mozzarella (hmm).
My favorite pie so far has been the gooey-good riff on pasta alla Gricia, which leans fully into its cheesy, peppery excess, squishy guanciale and all; one week later, it was being served with broccolini, meaning it now qualifies as healthy. But the simple cheese, the Hawaiian-ish pepperoni and pineapple quince and seasonal specials such as the fully loaded sausage and pear with goat gouda all have arguments in their favor. This isn’t a sourdough spot, but the dough is plenty delicious. There won’t be many end crusts left behind.
Keep your eyes peeled for baked pastas, especially the shallow tray of rigatoncini doused in a pleasantly light vodka sauce — any missing cream more than replaced by a big dollop of wobbly burrata. Yum.
What to know: The restaurant’s unusual layout, with its central prep area and hulking copper-sided oven, are remnants of its previous tenants, Seastar Bakery and Handsome Pizza, which closed in 2022.
What to eat: Spicy Caesar and radish-pear salads, pepperoni supreme or alla gricia pizzas, rigatoncini, the brutti ma buoni (“ugly but good”) -- and, better yet, best-in-town -- tiramisu.
Read more: Portland’s 5 best new pizzerias of 2023
No Saint is open for dinner Thursday-Sunday at 1603 N.E. Killingsworth St., 503-206-8321, nosaintpdx.com.
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com