I'm giving them the missing star. Nothing has really changed: The pizza remains about as good or passable as you're going to get West of Beaverton, the cocktail menu is still the best kept secret in town, and the live music makes it clear that any band that has a night off from the low-rollers' lounge at Spirit Mountain or Ilanai will always have a home... and that any plumber in this town can play Mustang Sally for an evening if they have a Home Depot bucket and no inhibitions.
So what's the extra star for? For putting up with what we're going to call "The Downtown Hillsboro Clientele." This isn't everyone who shows up for a meal or a drink in Downtown Hillsboro, mind you, but everyone who makes that experience seem like their personal cross to bear.
The Downtown Hillsboro Clientele starts the evening by complaining that they had to park half a block away from the restaurant when, just 10 years ago, they could park directly in front of it. The Downtown Hillsboro Clientele is shocked when it has to wait more than two minutes for a table.
The Downtown Hillsboro Clientele is regularly baffled by a restaurant's core menu items. It recoils when seeing Spanish words used in tapas dishes. It asks if the sweet mango wings are spicy. It wonders if your well-reviewed izakaya has teriyaki dishes like the place in the strip mall. It asks for six different beer tasters, but never a flight. It complains that you put a sandwich on a bagel, then complains when that sandwich leaves the menu.
It spits out garlic on a Margherita pizza.
That last bit of tourist classism I just won't abide. It's one thing when some tronfio northerner looks down on a southern pizza eater for indulging in some garlic... it's another when some borioso 'medigan who took one cruise around the boot decides that makes them the Barefoot Contessa of Forest Grove.
Unfortunately for your delicate little white-bread-and-ranch palate, not only will that offending garlic frequently make its way onto Pizza Marinara, but pizziolos who've actually eaten pizza in southern Italy at establishments devoid of tablecloths will tell you that garlic finds its way onto Pizza Margherita either in the sauce, in infused olive oil, or--gasp--in garlic powder.
And this is really going to knock you on your ass, but East of the Mississippi? East of the Tualatin? Yeah, folks throw garlic on Margherita pies constantly.
And you're going to knock points off because the basil's burnt? On a brick oven pizza? I'm attaching a photo of a margherita pizza upon which the basil is so scorched that it's basically chips. The place that pizza came from? Ken's Artisan: The best pizza in this entire state. That may be the last time you see me compare Pizzario to them, but if you're going to knock the place for what the best pizzamakers in the region regularly do... then I'm sorry, but just start ordering from Papa Murphy's.
The Downtown Hillsboro Clientele will not be satisfied until there are a maximum of three restaurants downtown, each of those restaurants serves a menu out of a 1950s luncheonette, all of them close promptly at 8 p.m., and they're surrounded by no fewer than eight antique stores, 10 barber shops with owners over 80, and two mortuaries to shuffle those barbers and luncheonette regulars off this mortal coil. Downtown Hillsboro's biggest obstacle to growth isn't foot traffic, parking, or diversity of offerings--its an obstinate core of old cranks that refuses to learn anything modestly new even if staff holds their hand throughout the entire process.
I credit Pizzario for doing the slow, patient work of converting the willing one new pizza, cocktail menu, and local band at a time. Downtown Hillsboro is changing adimirably in spite of the toddler palates and temperaments of its most thick-skulled Clientele. read more