BY MEG VAN HUYGEN for WEEKLY VOLCANO 4/3/26 |
What’s old is new again. With a few extra sparkles.
Straightaway, this is one of those stories that feels super Tacoma. An old restaurant suddenly transforms itself, with zero fanfare, becoming a down-to-earth pizza pub that feels like it’s been there for ages. That’s because it has.
Y’all know this spot as Zeek’s Pizza, which it was until, oh, about 30 seconds ago. Literally overnight, the Zeek’s signs were taken down, a new sandwich board was set up on the sidewalk advertising lunchtime slices, and the shop had transmogrified into Mikey’s Public House.
Oh. Okay, then. Who’s Mikey?
You already know that guy too. “I owned Zeek’s for, what, seven years? Something like that,” owner Michael Goronkin tells me from a barstool at the upstairs Frog Bar, which is now called the Frog Bar, by the way. “Yeah, the flip happened fast,” he adds, saying he put up the new signage and reopened on February 1. “Now I’m doing my own thing,” he laughs. “No hard feelings toward Zeek’s whatsoever. Love those guys. But I think my pizza is better!”
Goronkin’s not exactly reinventing the wheel here, though, just glitzing up the hubcaps a little. As a concept, Mikey’s Public House leans into what Tacomans already expect from this little flatiron building on Pac Ave.: pizza, wings, burgs, cold drinks, and the same friendly vibe. Goronkin kept most of the staff, and New York-style pizza still anchors the menu, with fresh upmarket bedazzlings like hot honey, arugula, and ricotta. It’s the same old wood-fire oven, but now the sauce is housemade and they’re using high-fat, provolone-y Grande mozzarella, the gold standard for NYC pies. There’s a barbecue brisket pie with bread-and-butter pickles that looks dank as all hell. New wing sauce options include a tamarind fish sauce (did the old Zeek’s tamarind flavor have fish sauce? I feel like … no?) and a Chinese five-spice. They’re also doing cannoli at Mikey’s now, something that’s kinda hard to find in these parts, even in Seattle.
The most crucial development on Mikey’s menu, though, is the Brooklyn Green Drizzle. This is the house’s signature finishing sauce, and it shares certain qualities with green goddess salad dressing. Goronkin wouldn’t say exactly what’s in it, which is wise because I would 100 percent go home and make a gallon of it to wash all my food in, like a raccoon. But I’m tasting parsley, basil, garlic, jalapeños or maybe serranos, and lots of olive oil, all blitzed together into a chunky liquid salad. This stuff appears by default on a few of the pies, like the Extreme Pepperoni, but it’s mandatory ordering for your pizza bones too. I kinda wanna spread it on a burger next time. Dip some wings in it. Put it in my cocktail. Psych, just kidding, but aside from drinks and the cannoli, it’s seriously hard to imagine anything not going well with the delicious drizz.
After chatting with Goronkin, I returned a week later with my dude, and we had a fine time in the upstairs bar over a vintage grunge soundtrack, peach ciders, and a shared pie. We did half prosciutto and lemon and half mushroom with the hot honey and ricotta. I asked for an extra little pot of Brooklyn Green Drizzle, as I plan to on every visit going forward. Outside, on the patio facing the walking path, there were people sitting in the sunshine with their pilsners and fluffy dogs, and we peeked out there and made a note to come back on another sunny day, if there ever is one. Downstairs, it was families with kids. Fine for them, but we’re done raising those things, so the Frog Bar is the place. It’s a whole vibe up there.
They’re just getting going, of course, so I foresee some wrinkles to be ironed out as the transition continues. Not that there are many obvious ones. My only complaint is the AI art on the sandwich board and menu specials. But I forgive anyone who suddenly decided to rebrand their restaurant overnight.
Goronkin is working on adding live music, karaoke, and trivia nights, and I hear he has a penchant for giving out free cannoli.
And no shade to Zeek’s, but Mikey’s is a definite glow-up from its previous incarnation. This place has so much more versatility than it did before, when it was essentially either a sliceria for college students or a place to take the kids after a soccer game. Now you can have a swanky-adjacent date night up in the Frog Bar. There’s sports happening up there too, if that’s your bag. It’s a place to share an erudite post-museum dinner. Maybe you missed the T Line and have to kill 15 minutes over a fancy slice. Or you feel like getting crunk by yourself on the bespoke local tap list. Oh yeah, and there are beer cocktails now. All of this, and you can still do a normie pepperoni pie with the kiddos or chill out in the patio beer garden. Zeek’s was fine. Mikey’s is just more.
It’s no secret that Tacoma is in her pizza era right now, and with the (temporary?) loss of Apizza, which is closed but for sale, Mikey’s new metamorphosis fills that downtown hole nicely. With nearby Abella kind of doing its own style of pizza and Camp Colvos rocking a sourdough version of a New York pie and a very different aesthetic around the corner, Mikey’s is contributing a great service to the UWT strip: a legit wood-fired NYC-style pizza with punched-up toppings and better drinks. And just a tiny touch of optional snazz, if you’re into that sort of thing. Plus it’s gone indie and is no longer a Seattle-based chain, plus there are dogs. That’s so Tacoma.
