This tiny house in West Seattle that happens to look like the one from Up does just two things, but executes them extremely well: thick, rectangular Detroit-style pies and flavor-twisted soft serve piped inside cinnamon-dusted Transylvanian pastry cones.
You’ll find pizzas here made with a 100-year-old sourdough starter (her name is Betty), and topped with everything from Filipino pork belly, sausage, and calamansi lime sauce to deconstructed clam chowder ingredients. It’s all excellent, down to every last crunch of crispy pepperoni edge and frizzled cheese laced along the crust’s hulking walls. And while there used to be a multi-month waitlist to get a box, same-day and next-day orders are typically available now.
Food Rundown
Mr. Pig
The Mr. Pig is topped with Filipino pork belly and sausage, but it's really all about the trio of tasty sauces. There's the classic tomato, a tangy calamansi lime chimichurri (blended with pineapple, parsley, cilantro, and red wine), and Moto's take on banana ketchup, which combines banana, sugar, vinegar, onion, garlic, and breadcrumbs. The generous splash of green sauce adds a bright suckerpunch that acts as an ideal bridge between the lechon and sweet Detroit-style tomato sauce. It's our favorite pie in the house.
Kissd
If you're partial to a pizza topped simply with cheese, tomato, and meat, the Kissd is a spectacular way to go. Drizzled with practically an urban beehive's worth of honey, it flawlessly sweetens up the pepperoni spice and the crispy mozzarella skirt while simultaneously flirting with the fermented tang of the sourdough.
Harlem Chop Cheese
This pie is a tribute to the chopped cheese, a sandwich that originated in New York City and consists of ground beef, lettuce, tomato, onion, seasonings, and american cheese smashed into a hero roll. Moto's version is a plain cheese pie, but topped with crumbled hamburger, slices of yellow american, and caramelized onion. Despite the cheese-on-cheese action happening, it's not heavy at all. If you're a chopped cheese (or cheeseburger) fan, you can feel great about ordering this.
Moto Pipe Cone
Ice cream is objectively the best dessert to consume post-pizza, and if you're grabbing your pies for takeout, dessert will have to come first, because frozen stuff melts. If you're not familiar with flavor burst soft serve, that's probably because Moto is the only place in Seattle where we've seen it. Essentially, imagine a regular soft serve machine, with artificial syrups pumped into the ridges, causing, well, bursts of flavor. You get it now. Anyway, there's nothing quite like creamy cold vanilla with a karate chop of fictional blue raspberry essence. Ask Lee (the owner) to top yours with his homemade chili crisp—it's spicy, tingly, loaded with crispy garlic chips, and works surprisingly well as a topping.
