Over the last couple of years (and really in the last 6 months to 1 year) San Francisco has seen an explosion of small high quality restaurants devoted to Neapolitan pizza, home/house made pasta and more. Just going from memory it probably started in the East Bay with Chez Panisse and has spread from there. The players all seem to be veterans of a couple of restaurants - in SF, Delfina and in Oakland they either were at Chez Panisse or Oliveto. Here’s just a few of the places serving this type of fare…I’ll get to a review in a second.
San Francisco:
A16
Delfina & Delfina Pizzeria
Pizza Nostra
Gialina
flour + water
and a few more
In Oakland:
Chez Panisse
Pizzaiolo
Dopo
Marzano’s - now one of my favorites…
In Marin Cty:
Pizzeria Picco
Lately Ed Kurtzman, Michelle, Traci, Tina and myself have been hitting a few of these either together or independently and have been very happy with the results. So it was that last night Ed, Michelle, Traci and myself hit flour + water to test out there wares. flour + water was started by a former chef at Delfina. The font on the menu at f+w looks very similar. The restaurant is on 2401 Harrison St (at 20th). We didn’t have reservations but showed up right at 5:30 and promptly received a table. Service is casual and friendly and done well. Our water was refreshed on a timely basis, food service spaced out pretty well. Corkage is $10 and they will waive corkage for each bottle purchased off the list. The wine list, while not online, is devoted to Italian wines (mostly regional and under $50). We were not charged corkage - we bought 1 bottle and opened 2 of our own.
The food:
We started with a couple of Antipasti dishes and one Contorni:
Santa Rosa Plum salad with wild arugula, hazelnuts and saba ($8). delicious salad, the plums were perfectly ripe and tasty, the arugula fresh and peppery and very good. Lightly dressed this is a very nice summer salad.
Fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta, zucchini and purple basil. ($10) Another winner. Light but flavorful but I wish it were $8 instead of $10. Small complaint.
fresh chickpeas with prosciutto cooked in the wood oven ($5). This was a fun dish but ultimately the prosciutto was not very good and tasted more like cubed domestic ham. Otherwise the chickpeas and the seasoning were perfect.
The Pizzas (we ordered no pastas or Secondi):
Margherita (tomato, basil, fior di latte, EVOO) - crust on the all the pizzas was slightly blistered at the edges but slightly underdone in the center unfortunately. This pizza was tasty but just a little too understated for me and the underdone dough in the middle was a little annoying. Overall tasty but not great. 3/5 stars
Melanzana (eggplant, capers, green olive, chili & garlic) - initially we were going to pass on this pizza but I am glad we didn’t as it was probably my second favorite behind the biancoverde. The flavors of everything just worked well together with a little Mediterranean flair.3.5/5 stars
Uovo (blistered endive, pancetta, farm egg & fontina) - this was the one I most looked forward to eating…why? Egg of course. Ultimately while some of the flavors were good, the blistered endive really left the pizza overly bitter. Plus I didn’t notice the pancetta through the endive. 2.5/5 stars
Biancoverde (ricotta, wild arugula, squash) - probably my favorite b/c it seemed the only pizza that was cooked through and whose ingredients didn’t overly wet the dough. Plus arugula, when fresh, is so wonderful. Light tasty with just enough intensity…4/5 stars
To summarize - a nice entry into the pizza wars but some work to be done.
My favorites in order:
- Pizzeria Picco (Larkspur)
- Gialina (Glen Park neighborhood SF)
- Pizzaiolo, Dopo, Pizzanostra
- Delfina Pizzeria
- flour + water
I need to try a new one in the Littly Italy section of SF and Marzano’s in Oakland. Plus I haven’t been to Dopo in a while - but I do love Dopo…