Pizza and Playtime for This Dove Vivi Lover

Alison Hilton was biking to Fred Meyer one day in 2004 when she spotted a house for sale that looked like a fit for the in-home preschool she wanted to open. It was in the neighborhood she’d already settled into, walking distance from her favorite haunts. But the pizzeria that was just a stone’s throw from the new house, in a little strip mall next to a convenience store and a dry cleaner, definitely wasn’t one of those favorites.

“I think it was called Kustom, with a K,” Hilton remembers. “It was kind of New York style, by the slice. It was terrible.”

After Kustom closed, she saw signs for its replacement, called Dove Vivi. “I was like, another pizza place?” She didn’t have much hope. But as a devout neighborhood booster, she checked out this new addition to NE 28th Avenue’s restaurant row anyway.

How It Started: “I didn’t know what cornmeal crust pizza was. But I gave it a try, and I loved it from the get-go,” Hilton says. “I was in my mid-30s and single, and don’t like to cook, and they’re close by. I easily went there once a week, sometimes more, and I never got tired of it.”

Standard Order: “My go-to is the corn pizza. If somebody had told me, ‘We’re putting corn on pizza,’ I would have thought, That’s weird. But whoever convinced me to try it was a genius,” recalls Hilton, who’s also a trail runner and ultramarathoner; she says she eats “a lot.” Sometimes she gets half corn, and half something else, so she can try the specials. “The banh mi pizza, I still fantasize about—basically the ingredients in the sandwich on pizza. I don’t know who comes up with that. I feel like there are little wizards in the kitchen. Just last week we had potato pancetta and again, I thought, Potatoes on pizza? Why? Why would that work? But it does.” 

Generation Za: When Hilton learned co-owner Delane Blackstock was pregnant, she brought in a little T-shirt advertising her preschool, Meadowlark. Then Blackstock had another child. So did the manager. “Over the years, many of the employees who ended up having kids, their children came to my school,” Hilton says. “We called them the Dove Vivi babies. One time we did a field trip, and they got to see how the pizza was made.”

In the Hood: Just north of Dove Vivi, Hilton’s photo is on the wall at Paydirt, where she’s a longtime member of the bar’s whiskey club. For a fancier night out, she likes Navarre, just south on 28th, and for a slightly different Italian fix she recommends the housemade pasta at Montelupo. “That’s what I love about my neighborhood,” she says. “I love small businesses. I love walking everywhere.”

Love Hurts: Unlike Hilton herself, her husband loves to cook. “I do remember in the beginning [of the relationship] actually mourning a little bit that I didn’t get to go to my favorite places as much, because here was this amazing person cooking dinner for me.” For her, it was the social and community aspect as well as the food, even for a frequent solo diner. “I never felt lonely going there alone,” she says of spots like Dove Vivi and Navarre. “I never felt the need to bring a book. It was just soaking up the atmosphere, and enjoying being in that space and eating good food and drinking good wine.

For Dessert: “It is the best chocolate chip cookie in Portland,” Hilton says of Dove Vivi’s limited cookie runs. “I go there more often than not these days just to get a cookie.” If they sell out before she gets there, she says, “I do my little sad Charlie Brown walk back home.”