What do pizza, chicken wings and Justin Timberlake's 2018 album have in common?
They've all got the sauce.
Now Spokane does, too.
Gabe Wood and Alex King, co-owners of Heritage Bar and Kitchen in downtown Spokane, just opened Sauced! in YaYa Brewing Co.'s Spokane Valley taproom. The new kitchen is serving up hot and thicc Detroit-style pizzas, plus wings, fries, and, obviously, loads of dipping options.
"We have a lot of sauces down here [at Heritage] that are very popular," King says. "So going out there, it made sense to take those and add more."
At the far end of YaYa's tasting room, a quick-order counter splattered with mustard yellow splotches means you've made it to the sweet and spicy spot.
After ordering your pizza or wings, you can get a little saucier, if you want. You can stay loyal to your mains like buffalo, barbecue, garlic Parmesan or hot honey. Or you can flirt with something a little more exotic, like Mambo, a tangy transplant from D.C., or Jake Sauce, a blue cheese-chipotle ketchup baby created by a beloved server at Heritage.
One thing's for sure — Spokane just got a whole lot more drip.
New to Detroit-style pizza? Don't sweat it. The rest of the city is, too.
"We don't want to be just another place," Wood says. "We want to offer something a little more unique."
Detroit-style pizza originated right alongside the city's automobile industry. In 1946, Gus Guerra and his team at Buddy's Rendezvous Pizzeria on the eastside of Detroit supposedly started baking pizza in the rectangular pans usually used to catch oil drips under cars.
The result was thick, rectangle pizzas with crispy crusts and super crispy corners, especially where the cheese caramelized around the edges.
"The crust on Detroit-style pizzas is awesome," Wood says. "The cheese bakes down the sides as cooks, and there's no wasted bites — you have cheese and toppings right to the very edge."
It's a far cry from the other Midwestern-style pizza, which usually dominates the New York slice opposition.
"I think a lot of times people just go straight to deep dish and they think of Chicago," King says. "But that's more of a dough lasagna in my eyes."
The pizza at Sauced! uses a classic dough that's much lighter than a traditional Chicago deep dish. It doesn't require a fork and knife like the "dough lasagna" usually does, but it can still hold a considerable weight of cheese and toppings.
Take, for instance, The Butcher ($18) which has pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, sausage and Canadian bacon on it, plus house red sauce and plenty of mozzarella. The Heritage ($18.50) riffs off its namesake's cheeseburger with mozzarella and cheddar, plus ground beef, onion, dill relish, lettuce, fresh tomato and the top secret sauce, of course. The Spicy Dave and Hot Doug ($16), named for an inside joke between the two owners, gets zhuzhed up with pepperoni, bacon, jalapeño and roasted garlic.
Wood and King have put in the time to come up with pizza combos they think taste best. But if you think you can do better, you're more than welcome to create your own pie. Or add an extra sauce to one of Wood and King's creations to go extra crazy.
"Hot honey has begun to be a very popular add-on to pizzas," King says.
Each pie is typically about 10 inches long and 8 inches wide, but don't let size fool you — that is plenty of pizza for two, maybe even three, adults. You can get a personal pizza for a few dollars less than the regular size.
Sauced! also offers Heritage's super popular fries — both their sweet potato fries and rosemary curly fries. But the wings are where flavor fiends can really let loose. Guests can mix-and-match between five dry rubs and 16 sauces to create the ultimate combo from among 80 total possibilities.
"We wanted to have a ton of options," Wood says, "and we make most everything here in house."
Neither Wood nor King have any ties to the Midwest. Both are Eastern Washington natives who met while working at O'Doherty's in downtown Spokane. They opened Heritage together in 2018 when they wanted to get back into the industry after less-than-fulfilling jobs in sales.
When COVID rocked the restaurant world, necessity proved, as always, to be the mother of invention. Heritage started offering take-and-bake Detroit-style pizzas to stay afloat.
"We really liked how they turned out, [especially] not having a background in that," King says.
In fall 2022, King, Wood and their general manager, Conner Monroe, took a trip to Detroit to do some legitimate research. After eating way too much pizza in one weekend, the pie at Buddy's ended up being one of their favorites. As soon as they got back, they started looking for a way to bring that kind of pizza to Spokane.
Once they connected with YaYa Brewing, things really started cooking. Plus, as fate would have it, they found out that the pizza pans Buddy's now uses (they don't use oil pans anymore) are made by LloydPans right here in Spokane Valley.
In the future, Sauced! might try to do some menu pairings with YaYa beers, or at least be able to recommend which brew goes best with which sauce. But ultimately, Wood and King just want you to have a good time with good food and good people.
"We put a ton of emphasis on service in general," Wood says. "It's so hard to find good customer service — like, servers and bartenders that actually care about you having a good experience."
That's why it's so hard for Sauced! to decide when it closes each night — as long as people are ordering wings and pizza, Sauced! will keep serving 'em. But while they do their job, Wood, King and their staff just have one request: No matter how crazy you get with flavors and combos, please, please "get sauced responsibly." ♦
Sauced! • 11712 E. Montgomery Drive, Spokane Valley • Open Mon-Sat 3 pm-close • getsaucedresponsibly.com • Instagram: @getsaucedresponsibly
