Ken's Artisan Pizza - Bend — Restaurant in Bend

Finally, the wait for great pizza in Bend is over. Well, you might have to wait a bit with a line out the door, but this is seriously fantastic pizza. It is early days and they are still working out some kinks, but overall it is an impressive restaurant. Very fair prices, nice drink menu, the menu is a good balance between inspired and classic. My wife and I started with the charred beets. This was a very generous portion and its was quite good. The lemon whipped ricotta was especially refreshing. I would not say that this dish blew me away, but my wife really loved it. Then we had the fennel sausage and onion pizza and the prosciutto pizza. The prosciutto pizza was a delicate masterclass. The prosciutto was sliced so thinly that it covered the entire pizza, but was actually see-through. This gave you incredible prosciutto in every bite and perfectly balanced flavors. The fennel and sausage pizza was a more topping-heavy and had so much flavor. The caramelized onions balanced out the bold flavors to perfection. Out of the two, I would say it wasn’t the masterpiece that the prosciutto was, but still great. Both pizzas had a perfect leopard print crust. The service was as good as it could have been. The staff was running around with so much energy, trying to get everyone served as quickly as possible. My only minor criticism is that it is a bit cavernous in there, so it is quite loud and on the difficult side to have a conversation. It is great to have a lively place in town where the food is still executed to perfection. Best pizza in town by a...

For full transparency, the pizza here was pretty good but at the end of the day no matter how good your food is, it cannot make up for poor service. This review is mainly for the service and specifically, the hostess - she was very condescending and passive aggressive. For context, this place doesn't take reservations so we put our names on the wait list and the hostess let us know that once we receive a text that our table is almost ready to make our way over, which is what we did. When we arrived however, she informed us that our table wasn't ready yet but it should be soon. Everything was still fine, we figured we'd only have to wait maybe 5, at most 10 minutes but we weren't seated until after 15 minutes! I let the hostess know that it would have been nice if they had been more transparent about the wait times as we had also forfeited a table at another restaurant while we were waiting for them and she immediately got defensive. I let her know that I was simply sharing feedback to hopefully make for a better customer experience for other customers and she just became visibly dismissive and annoyed. It's extremely disappointing to have this type of interaction right before our meal as it completely dampened our experience and made it hard for us to enjoy our dinner. Very disappointing behavior for a hostess who's job it is to make for a welcoming and comfortable experience for the patrons and sadly she fell...

My friend and I came here for his birthday. I arrived on a Monday at 5:15 and put my name on the wait list and was told to return at 6:05. We were seated at around 6:15 and were attended by the server shortly after. She helped us with some recommendations after being asked and we ordered a couple drinks, the ground pork and onion pizza, and the burrata pizza. The server warned us that the pizzas would take a while to cook but I didn't feel like we had to wait long. The pizzas arrived fresh out of the oven as expected. We started with the pork and onion pizza, which was delicious. We moved onto the burrata pizza, which was my favorite. The sauce was excellent and the flavors were balanced between the cheese, basil, and sauce. Both pizzas were light yet filling. Just a well done meal that made you appreciate why this restaurant is so popular. I look forward to returning and trying...