A la Mode Pies Is Coming Back to 59th and Phinney, and Thanksgiving Week Comes First

In 2009, A la Mode Pies was one man with an oven and a car. Chris Porter took orders online, baked each pie himself, and drove it to the customer's house. He did that for two years. In 2011, he put his savings into a storefront at 59th Street and Phinney Avenue, with Woodland Park Zoo across the street and the mountains in the front window. He had never worked in a bakery before.

That corner closed in August 2023. Construction crews are now at work on a new café in the same spot, on the ground floor of the new Woodland View building at 5819 Phinney Ave. N. The opening target is January 2027. Pie comes back to the corner sooner than that, and the reason it is coming back at all goes back to before the old building came down.

The new building was planned with the pie shop in it

When the old café closed, the building's owner had donated the aging property to an affordable housing organization. The structure had to be torn down and rebuilt. Homestead Community Land Trust redeveloped the site. Small businesses usually lose their space in that situation. This time the organization approached Porter early and asked him to come back once the new building was finished.

"They basically said, 'You're kind of an institution on this corner, and the community has embraced you,'" Porter told What Now Seattle. "The only way we see this being redeveloped is if you are involved and agree to come back."

So the return was planned before the last slice was sold. PhinneyWood reports that Porter started working on it two years before the café closed in August 2023. The finished building is Woodland View, a five-story condominium with 25 homes and two ground-floor commercial spaces, both acquired by A la Mode Pies. The Daily Journal of Commerce described it as a completed project in March 2026. The retail space was designed around the business that had been on the corner before.

Porter's own memory of the original café explains why that mattered to him. "When Phinney opened in 2011, it was magic to me," he said. "It was the first time I saw my big dream solidify." His staff grew from just him to about eight people. He stayed the main baker, often arriving at 6 a.m. and leaving at 8 p.m. The café served 10 to 12 kinds of pie a day, many of them seasonal, all made by hand and baked that day. You could buy a whole pie, take a slice home, or have it warmed with ice cream. Porter wanted the whole experience to come "as close to grandma's as it could possibly be."

Three years of Phinney customers asking elsewhere

The business didn't go away while the corner was closed. It kept running from two other shops, and one of them was opened partly with Phinney customers in mind.

Both shops show up as pickup locations on A la Mode's current online order page. The Ballard shop on NW 56th Street is the closest one to Phinney Ridge until January.

Customers kept bringing up the old corner. "Almost every single day for the last three years, someone has walked into one of my other locations and brought up Phinney," Porter said. He calls the Phinney café "the flagship" and "what put us on the map."

Why the opening date keeps moving

Treat January 2027 as a target, not a promise, because the date has already slipped. On September 10, What Now Seattle reported that Porter was aiming for November and that permitting and construction could push it into December. Fifteen days later, PhinneyWood reported that Seattle's long permitting process and "a few unexpected hiccups" had pushed it to January 2027.

There's also a money side to the schedule. Porter is paying for the new café out of his own pocket, and he has said plainly that this year's holiday orders help cover the cost. "This year, our holiday pie sales are doing double duty," he told PhinneyWood. "Every pie ordered helps cover the real cost of bringing this space back to life."

That's why the return is happening in stages. Customers can buy pie for the café before they can buy pie at the café.

The corner is back before the café is

For anyone within walking distance of 59th and Phinney, the timeline below is what matters now. Some of these dates come before the café opens, and one has already passed.

1. September (past). A la Mode sold a new Wild BEARy pie, with part of the sales going to Fern and Juniper, Woodland Park Zoo's two brown bears, to support their long-term care and food. It made sense for a shop whose front window faced the zoo.
2. October 1 (open now). The Thanksgiving menu and pre-orders went live on the A la Mode website.
3. Saturday, October 17. Two pie-and-beer tastings in the Aviator Alcove at Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery, 8570 Greenwood Ave. N., from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and 7 to 8:30 p.m. Each session has 16 seats at $50. Guests get the first taste of four new pies on this year's Thanksgiving menu, each paired with a Flying Bike beer.
4. Thanksgiving week. Porter plans to sell his pies on the corner at the new location that week, even though the café won't be open for regular business. Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year. No exact day or hours have been announced yet.
5. January 2027 (target). The café opens for regular business. PhinneyWood says it will be the first to announce the grand opening date, and that Porter plans to give the blog a private tour of the space before then.

Two items on that list are easy to miss. The October 17 tastings have only 32 seats in total across both sessions. And Thanksgiving week will be the first time in more than three years that pies are sold at 59th and Phinney, about two months before the café opens.

The whole schedule comes back to the same corner. "My dream of owning the best pie shop in Seattle was baked on that corner," Porter said. "I just want to bring the smell of fresh apple pie home to a neighborhood I adore." For now, the closest A la Mode pies are at the Ballard shop on NW 56th Street. The next chance to get one on the corner itself is Thanksgiving week, from a building that was planned with this pie shop on its ground floor.

If you're following how Phinney Avenue's storefronts are changing block by block, or just want to talk about what a corner like 59th and Phinney means for the homes around it, Brooke Davis is always glad to talk it through over a slice. Let's Connect.