Meet Matthew Cooke, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of February. Look for his reports daily on Slog and Line Out. —Eds.

One my inspirations for taking this “Yesterday” job was the tenuous hope of The Stranger sending me to restaurants. I live by a simple rule: The only thing better than yummy food is free yummy food.

Unfortunately, this is only the second one they’ve suggested. The first one involved hot dogs, which I find somewhat delicious, but also a bit lippy and asshole-y. This, however, was a pizza joint, an infinitely (for me) preferable cuisine.

The Suggests blurb specifically mentions the bar, so I made a point of stationing myself there. It’s dominated by a looming, ornately carved backstop, reclaimed (again, as the Suggests blurb mentioned) from the J&M Café. The oaky facade retains a few scars from the smoke and sin of its former home, bestowing a withered gravity that makes a stiff drink go down smooth.

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Ordering food, I asked the waitress (who, like everyone else in the joint, couldn’t possibly have been nicer) which pizza was her favorite. She recommended a Margherita with “shredded” pepperoni. I considered ordering more food to get a broader opinion of the menu, but an entire pizza seemed gluttonous enough.

I wasn’t disappointed in the waitress’s suggestion. The pepperoni had a nice crisp, like spicy hunks of slightly-overdone bacon. But the best thing about the pie was the sauce.

In the surprisingly witty movie The House Bunny, Anna Faris’s accidentally insightful character, while describing the virtues of eye makeup, proclaims “the eyes are the nipples of the face!” Well, for me, the sauce is the nipple of the pizza. And Olympia’s sauce—like a good nipple—is delicious; tangy and substantial, yet subtle and inviting.

Was it the best pizza in Seattle? Nope. “Best pizza in Seattle” is a tough fucking bar; there’s some kick-ass pie in this town. You’ll pay more at those places however, and will probably deal with an off-putting level of pretension while you do it.

Renovations at Olympia make the place feel roomier, but it still feels neighborhood-y. That little area on 15th, anchored by the Canterbury, always has, no? Does that slice of Capitol Hill not have a particular vibe? It feels to me like the outer edge of what we might call “Cap Hill— Partytown,” a last outpost of youth and urbanity before you wade into the ocean of Seattle’s omnipresent single-family zoning.

Come to the edge of Partytown for a meal and a pint. You’ll love it there.