Lovely's Fifty-Fifty

photo credit: Daily Feed

Tonight I visited another place on the Zagat list: Lovely's Fifty-Fifty. This was ranked #9 of the 10 best restaurants on the Zagat list. (For context, Nostrana was ranked #10). It promised fantastic pizza, and "killer" housemade ice cream. Needless to say, I was excited.

Cute interior. Lots of wooden benches and kitchy wall art

The menu appears to change daily (or at least is printed daily) and features seasonal dishes. I started with a chickpea and red pepper soup. It was the highlight of the meal. I actually really enjoyed the soup - it had lots of simmered whole chickpeas in a spicy red pepper base. It also came with a big hunk of bread, which I thought was kind of odd for a pizza place (bread then pizza?) but I happily ate the soup. It also had a lovely (see what I did there?) sour cream topping which helped cut down some of the spice. The soup was great!

Yummy chickpea soup, with a side of glare

Next, I had the bellwether ricotta and gremolata pizza. Honestly, I was not impressed. The ricotta was very bland (yes, I know ricotta isn't terribly flavorful, but this was especially bland) and the pizza was incredibly oily. The gremolata was nice, although a bit too garlicky. The only redeeming thing about this pizza was the crust: it was made from a sourdough starter, but didn't have that powerful sourdough taste (which was good, in my opinion), and it was also thick and chewy around the edges. For a place that is known for pizza, I was pretty disappointed.

Ricotta pizza

Of course I had to try the housemade ice cream. There were about 6 flavors to choose from, but I went for the salted caramel. Again...disappointed. It just wasn't anything special. I had fantastic ice cream last week at Ruby Jewel, and that place wasn't on any sort of top 10 list! I'll need to go back to do an entry on this blog :)  The salted caramel at Lovely's did not have a strong caramel flavor, or a strong salt flavor for that matter. I wanted the caramel flavor to have a punch (similar to the salted caramel sauce at Nostrana....YUM), but it was extremely muted. Zagat... I think you failed me.

At least the waffle cone was good?

Don't get me wrong - Lovely's was not a bad meal. It just didn't live up to the Zagat claim of being one of the top 10 restaurants in this city. Though the soup was excellent, the pizza and ice cream were disappointing. But in case you want to try for yourself:

Lovely's Fifty-Fifty
4039 N Mississippi Ave, Portland OR