Portland Restaurant: Ken's Artisan Bakery

What: Ken's Artisan Bakery 
Where: 331 NW 21st Ave
When: Monday Night Pizza 5:30 - 9:30pm
Honeys Heart: Fennel Sausage and Onion Pizza (and free bread!)

A few weeks ago, Katie, Doug, Adam, and I checked out PREAM at Ned Ludd as our second Monday pizza night. Keeping this new tradition alive, last week we headed to Ken's Artisan Bakery's Monday Night Pizza.

Ken's Artisan Pizza on SE 28th serves up pizzas nightly, but pizza is only available at the 21st location on Mondays, making it fit perfectly with our "Monday night pizza" theme. We put our names on the list around 7pm and sipped some drinks down the street while we waited.

One theme for these pizza nights is waiting. We were seating around 7:50 and since we had already spent some time with the menu, we were ready to order. We started with a bottle of Cianti ($28) and a Caesar Salad ($8).

The salad was bigger and less bitter than PREAM's. It was definitely less adventurous, but sometimes a classic caesar hits the spot.

For pizzas we went with the Soppressata ($13), Fennel Sausage and Onions ($13), and the Butternut Squash ($12) which we added arugula on top of ($2).

The Fennel Sausage won first prize. It was nicely flavored and not to "fennel-y". Katie isn't typically a fennel fan, but she liked this one too!

The Butternut Squash was the runner up. The flavors were very "fall" and the arugula made this otherwise simple pie more interesting. Adam said he could have used a little more sauce, but I was pleased.

The Soppressata was our least favorite. Not bad, just really spicy. It did say spicy on the menu, but we all appreciate a little heat and weren't worried about it- but we should of have been. It was too hot to really enjoy.

We came for the pizza, but there were some additional perks of Ken's Artisan Bakery's pizza night. First they brought over little shortbread cookies with our bill that were pretty tasty!

They also offer up any of the leftover bread from the day for free, so we both left with a couple slices of leftover pizza and an entire baguette. Keep this in mind if you're looking to do some carb loading for some reason... or you just love bread (ahem, Adam).

How did Ken's compare to PREAM? The pizzas were good- Adam really liked the dough/crusts, and they were little cheaper, but also slightly smaller and more simple. Of our pizza nights so far, I would probably pick PREAM, but Ken's is still a great option and was closer to home.

We have an ongoing list of pizza places to try. Apizza Scholls, Pizza Maria, and Vincente's to name a few. What are your favorites? We'll need more ideas!