The space, the food…Delancey is best described as pure, clean and deliciously simple. Yet, despite the austere inelaborate decor, it feels cozy here. It must be the proud presence of the warm brick oven that sets the tone…or the quirky photos on the walls, the basic furniture…maybe its the snug unpretentious neighborhood location. The softness of this pizzeria in conjunction with the cordial hospitality that owners Molly and Brandon effortlessly exude makes Delancey feel less like a rising star in the restaurant scene (which it certainly is) and more a local nook where its seems nearly intuitive to unwrap your scarf and stay awhile.

Interview with Molly Wizenberg…book author, creator of Orangette and co-owner of Delancey.

How did Delancey come to be?
Delancey was Brandon’s idea. Brandon is originally from New Jersey and when I met him he was living in New York. He grew up being able to get his hands on great pizza whenever he wanted it. Coming to Seattle where there really wasn’t the same style that he grew up with (there really isn’t a lot of New York or New Jersey style pizza here) he really really missed it. Especially being someone who loved it so much.

Had you been exposed to that type of pizza previous to him?
Not previous to him, no. I come from Oklahoma which is land of barbecue so when I met Brandon he really introduced me to pizza and took me to really great places- mainly in Brooklyn although we have a couple places that we like in Manhattan too. But anyway, he, I think had been thinking for a long time about what he really wanted to do with himself. Hes a musician and a composer by training, but you know, there’s just not a lot of jobs out there these days for composers so I think he always sort of kept his options open as far as what he wanted to do in life. This was something he was passionate about and he felt he could contribute to this city that wasn’t being done yet. So really from the time that I met him, before he was even thinking about this restaurant, he was playing with pizza dough recipes. I mean, hes just so nutty for pizza. So, when he announced that he was thinking of opening a restaurant and specializing in Brooklyn/New York style pizza it didn’t really surprise me although it was certainly terrifying. I mean this is a whole life style.

So were you gung ho on it from the beginning? Did you have any reservations?
I never really had reservations from the economic side of things…umm, certainly this economy is daunting but I think that people have a real love for pizza that I would liken to a love for barbecue that you would find in Kansas City or Texas..those kinds of places. I feel like people are crazy for pizza and people are crazy for barbecue- they’re these kind of subsets of food that people are passionate about. I think there is always a hunger for those things- if you’re doing it well I think that people will come. So I never worried from the financial side of things, I worried from the personal side of it. Just that, this place…there’s really no way to run a restaurant the way that we would want to run it without putting our whole selves into it and that frightened me. Brandon’s always had lots of hobbies and things…sort of big goals and sometimes he sees them through and sometimes he doesn’t- as I think all of us do with hobbies and goals. I think that for awhile I couldn’t tell whether this was a hobby or a real aspiration and so I didn’t say “Whoooa nooo, you cant do this..” because I wasn’t even sure if it was going to happen and then it did happen. I would say that for the past six months to a year I have been sort of trying to wrap my head around how to have a marriage and how to live the way that we want to live and also run this restaurant the way we want to run it…its not been immediately evident, you know?

Does Brandon have a culinary degree at all or did he just figure this all out for himself?
No…he’s self taught.

That’s great…impressive. Is Delancey what you imagined it would be?
It is so much harder than I would have imagined. I had absolutely not a clue…not a clue! He knew better than I did- I had worked in two restaurants before…both pretty briefly. I didn’t actually enjoy working in restaurants- I did not like it at all. But Brandon had been working in restaurants since he was 15, both in the front of the house and back of the house. He had more of a global sense of what it might be like but neither of us really had any idea, well, of the kind of things that you don’t think about unless you have a real stake in it. Like, we just had no idea, you know, of the challenges that come with having employees, with having employees who leave and go on to other things (laughs)…with having all kinds of things that go wrong. When you have a business that has as many sort of moving parts as a restaurant does- shit just goes wrong! You cant know about it until you’re in it and I think even working in the restaurant business (unless you’re a manager or that kind of thing) I think its hard to see all the levels of complexity in it. So its very different than I would had imagined…in some ways its easier- there are certain parts that run themselves that I had thought would be terribly complicated but a lot of things that I just never even thought about have turned out to be so difficult.

What type of work did you do predominantly previous to this?
I, lets see…I was a graduate student…then I worked at the University of Washington Press for awhile. I worked there for about 3 years- I was a book publicist. Then I left the Press (it will be three years ago in January) to write full time as a freelance writer.

Do you miss the Press? I mean, obviously, being a freelance writer is very different from being affiliated…
I miss some of the things that also drove me crazy when I was working for other people. I think that the beauty of being a freelancer is all that great stuff of being able to set your own schedule and being your own boss but at the same time you kind of never get to leave your work “at the office” and I miss that. But, I hope never to go back to it because I do love working for myself.

As a kid…what did you want to “be”…do you remember?
Oh, I wanted to be lots of things! I wanted to be a “whale scientist”- I was really into marine biology at one point. There was a time that I think I wanted to be a poet but I didn’t know how that worked…like, I didnt really know how you would be a poet for a living. By the time I was old enough to consider what it would mean to try to write for a living, the thought of being dependent on creativity that way was so frightening to me and I actually stopped writing. I really didn’t really write at all outside of school from the time that I was 19 to the time that I was 25. I just felt like I had written a lot as a teenager and it was sort of “what I did” but I think I really scared myself by thinking about trying to do it professionally. I felt like if I had to depend on it I would lose any sort of muse that I had ever had. It took my getting to a point and really not being satisfied with what I was doing with my life to feel like I missed it so much that I was willing to take the risk for it and willing to go after it even if it frightened me.

Whats your favorite part of this…of Delancey?
I think my favorite part is seeing regulars come in. We have a number of regulars who sit at the bar and we know their names and, you know, if we have some new dish that we re working out or that we want to put on the menu we ll always make it for them and have them try it out…and its really fun to have that relationship. I feel like when we opened this place we wanted it to be a neighborhood restaurant- the kind of place where you know everybody’s name. Its turned out to be a lot bigger than that, which is great, but also has its difficulties so those moments when it does feel like a neighborhood restaurant and when it feels like we re just cooking for our friends is for me the best part.

Your least favorite part? It could be something very simple really…like doing dishes or balancing schedules…
I hate the cleaning. Brandon is probably sitting over there laughing because its also the thing I am most obsessed with. This place, well that half of it (points to the bar/oven/kitchen area) is extremely hard to keep clean because of the amount of flour flying around in there. It is just impossible to get the floor clean, impossible to keep the shelves clean…we have to cover up the wine glasses between the time that we close at night and the time that we open the next day because just making the dough the morning of the day before gets so much flour flying around. Anyway, I am both obsessed with it and I hate it (laughs).

But you’re probably getting really good at doing it right?
I’m getting pretty good…I’m the only one that actually gets this place clean which is also a source of frustration. That’s the thing that’s hard for me is that we have an incredible staff and they work so hard but they will never notice things the way Brandon and I notice them. They’ll just never do the things that we would do because they just aren’t as invested in it as we are and that’s totally natural but its also so hard for me.

What has been the biggest challenge this far?
I feel like…Brandon help me out on this one.

(Brandon- Its the hours…they are literally just never ending. I mean, with having help we both do between 12-15 hour days, 5 days a week and then our 2 days off we work about half a day on Tuesday and about a third of a day on Mondays.)

Yeah, even when I’m completely off…when I’m not working in the restaurant and I’m not supposed to be coming in to the restaurant- I’m still tending to email on the restaurant account or I still have people I need to call that I am supposed to follow up with…there’s just always something. For the first two months we were open I was working a station in here every night we were open and then I was writing for Bon Appetit and then doing all the sort of managerial stuff here (schedules, payroll). Now, Ive cut back to two days a week but I’m still doing all those other things. So what I’m heading toward doing is cutting back to not actually working a station in here at all and just doing all these managerial/owner things.

Whats your favorite thing on the menu?
My favorite thing on the menu is the Brooklyn pizza. Its our basic cheese pie but its based on the combination of cheeses that are used at a pizzeria in Brooklyn called Di Fara which was Brandon’s favorite pizza place when I met him. It really was the first great New York pizza that I had and it is outstanding. He uses on this particular pizza- fresh mozzarella, aged mozzarella (the kind that you grate) and Grana Padano and its just a fantastic combination of cheeses. So that’s where we drew our inspiration in putting together the Brooklyn…we use that same combination of cheeses that he uses and its just, to me, it is the perfect straight up New York cheese pizza.

Whats the most popular?
The sausage…which is essentially the Brooklyn plus sausage. We make our own pork sausage.

Is there anything that you will not ever put on your menu?
We will never put on the menu sort of what I think of as kind of gimmicky pizza toppings…like barbecue chicken, Canadian bacon, pineapple. Of course, people really like those things…nothing wrong with it, just we don’t like it and we re not going to do it.

What would you like to see change in the way that folks eat?
I don’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about nutrition. My mom is a pilates instructor and I grew up in a household where my mom was dieting regularly. I feel like I know the whole thing about shopping from the outer circle of the store and we go to the farmers market all the time and it sounds really trite but I really believe in moderation in all things. I mean, I eat dessert once if not twice a day…umm, I drink alcohol, I eat cheese, I use cream, I use butter. I think the key is not depriving yourself of any of those things because when you start craving them and you start lusting after it in this unbalanced way because you’re not letting yourself have it that’s when you really get into trouble. If you let yourself have a little bit you don’t tend to get these crazy cravings that spiral wildly. I don’t know..I just feel like- I’m more interested in having a little bit of everything than setting restrictions. I feel like there’s a lot of fear about food in general. I mean, every time I do a book event I get people saying to me in front of a crowd of people “how do you stay so slim making all those sweets?” and its an embarrassing question for me but also…and yeah, I’m young and I’m sure some day my metabolism will slow down…but I don’t feel like sweets have to equal bad food. You know, I don’t think there is such a thing as bad food. Not that I haven’t fallen prey to that idea too- I think its really hard in our culture to resist it. I remember a time in the late 90’s where I was using fat-free bottled vinaigrette because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do but the truth of the matter is I feel like, you know, that kind of stuff has yucky things in it too. Its got all these gum’s and sugars and weird stuff and I would rather just have a little bit of real good salad dressing and be satisfied.

Future plans for Delancey?
Keep on truckin’! To just keep on trying to get closer to having some sort of a balance with it so that we can get a few more days away from here and still feel really confident about the quality of food and whats going on in here. And maybe, at some point have Brandon be able to take a day off.

How long have you folks been open now?
Since August 12th.

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
I would probably be doing the same things that I’m doing when I’m not in here which is writing for Bon Appetit, definitely be writing for my blog more…I would just be out trying to live my life and have stories to tell. I feel like that’s kind of the fun thing of being a writer- everything is fodder for your work you know? So I feel like the time I spend actually sitting at my desk writing is every bit as productive as the time I spend sort of seeking out adventures or things that will create stories in the future.

What do you eat at home? What do you like to cook?
We ve gotten to cook at home exactly twice since we opened the restaurant. But this week I have been into kale…Ive been eating kale that I cook in olive oil in a really hot skillet and then finish with lemon juice- just super simple. Really love scrambled eggs- we always buy eggs at the farmers market. We always make a tomato sauce recipe from one of Marcella Hazans books, its a tomato sauce with butter and onion. We eat that with pasta. I love meatballs and sausage…haven’t gotten to make them in a long time- the meatballs anyway. I do a lot of baking- a huge amount of baking…I’m a big cake person.

What are your food favorites?
I never thought I would have said this prior to meeting Brandon but I have turned in to a pizza and ice cream kind of person. Did not think that was what I was into but I am it turns out. When it really comes down to my favorite things and what I will habitually crave it really vacillates between vegetables and sweets. For vegetables I will really crave things like leafy greens like the kale Ive been eating this week. Sometimes, I just really want a whole head of broccoli…its really a little crazy. I am currently having a love affair with a particular pound cake that I have made a couple times that is a sweet potato pound cake. It has mashed sweet potato in it…its great…one of my favorite things right now.

Anything you dont like? Foods that you hate?
The foods that I don’t like I tend to dislike because of texture. I have texture issues. I just recently ate my first oyster in 25 years. I ate an oyster when I was 6 years old and it scared the pants off of me. I did like it this time around however. Jiggly, connective tissue in meat totally freaks me out. I’m not one of those people that can gnaw on a chicken leg- all the tendons and things scare me to death. I like the meat but the texture of all those little bits freak me out.

Favorite places to eat in Seattle?
I love Poppy, How To Cook A Wolf, Cafe Lago…for sushi, I love Shiro’s. I love the milkshakes at Lunchbox Laboratory.

Any places in Seattle that you like to have pizza?
I’m going to refrain from commenting on that (laughs). Lets just say, we would not have opened a pizzeria if we could get exactly the kind of pizza here that we wanted to eat.

Free time?
Taking long walks with Brandon and the dog….ummm, love taking road trips….baking. Recently, we’ve become obsessed with Battlestar Gallactica. We’re not proud of it but its true.

Proudest achievement?
Finding a way to support myself doing the things that I love.

Heroes? Folks you admire?
Im hugely inspired by David Byrne, the singer and former Talking Heads leader. What I really love about him is not only his talent with music but he works in many different media. Hes done visual art, hes written books and I really love that he continually reinvents himself…I find it incredibly inspiring. He has really built a career out of doing his own wacky thing and hes made it work…I really love that.

Any pet peeves as a restaurant owner?
I think one thing that’s tough is since pizza is often served as a street food people think of it as a fast food so they come here expecting us to not really be the full service restaurant that we are and that its important for us to be. They expect it to be really fast- that they could just step up to a counter, place their order, take a number and get their pizza and leave. They also expect to be able to get take-out. Just as much as our drive was to open this place because we love pizza there was also this real desire to have a neighborhood restaurant…a place where people would come, hang out, have a glass of wine and it would be an experience. So, its frustrating to me when people assume that just because the food we’re serving is sometimes served as a fast food that we are going to be that kind of restaurant. So they get frustrated when there’s a wait, they get frustrated because we don’t do take-out. What it comes down to is we really think of ourselves as a restaurant that happens to be focused on pizza. I think the tough thing about the restaurant industry is since everyone has eaten in restaurants- everyone thinks that they are an expert on restaurants. Just because we’ve all eaten in restaurants a bunch doesn’t mean we all understand the intricacies of what goes on to create the experience that as guests we hardly even notice is happening around us.

Vices? Whiskey, tobacco, hookers…anything?
Definitely not hookers (laughs). Cool Ranch Doritos…gummy candies…jelly beans- I don’t know if any of these things count as vices really.

I don’t know…the Cool Ranch Doritos might…
Sometimes Nacho Cheese Doritos although they’re not as good as the Cool Ranch Doritos. Buffalo Ranch Doritos are also very good- its like a mixture of Cool Ranch and Nacho Cheese Doritos. Yeah, we have studied at the school of Dorito.