When I am knee deep in matchbox cars and I’ve forgotten what its like to drink coffee while its actually still hot; I reminiscent about my LA days, where an afternoon sipping lattes would just happen, the natural progression of a lazy brunch sunday.  It didn’t require days of heated negotiations about who was going to watch the kids or a barter system of babysitting favors.  You just went to your favorite cafe, ordered a latte and probably that piece of cake that you knew you shouldn’t eat and sat down.  It was that simple.
Now anyone can tell you, myself included, that life after kids will never be that simple again.  The sheer amount of crap you have to bring with you to dine out with children is daunting and if you intend to enjoy that latte hot you better be ready with a little bribery as soon as that porcelain hits the table.  Odds are, you will spill half of it all over yourself on the way to the table anyway but hey.. it will still be hot!

Hence the reason why I immediately fell in love with Deru.  It’s urban, crisp, busy and packed; all those LAish things I miss~yet still completely accommodating to life with the wild ones.  As young families buzzed and ate around us, no one cared that my toddler was performing rare feats of chair gymnastics while simultaneously drinking his entire hot chocolate in one gulp.  We were just part of the chaos.

I am not sure what was better, the Margarita pizza or the bowl ‘ol cappuccino; though drinking from a basin of hot, frothy milk made me feel rustically Mediterranean, which I liked.  The pizza was everything one wants a Margarita pizza to be~fresh and chewy with tomato sauce that tasted like sunlight.  It was wood fired of course, as all good pizzas are, and we polished it off in no time.

 

 

 

 

Deru is a bit of a hybrid; part restaurant, part market.  One could feasibly package up a posse of side dishes, wood fired pizza included, and head out into the big wide world to find a quiet spot to grub down.  Yet doing that would mean missing out on that chaos I love so well; the clang of dishes and loud conversations and the scramble for a seat amid the hustle and bustle of a seemingly big city restaurant tucked inconspicuously into a tiny corner of suburbia.  And missing that would, quite simply, be a shame.

 

 

 

Deru Market

Open Monday-Saturday 9am~9pm

Closed Sundays

425-298-0268

723 9th Ave Kirkland, WA 98033