San Francisco Pizza Adventures (Update 8/9/08

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
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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:

  1. Pizzeria Picco (Larkspur)
  2. Gialina (Glen Park neighborhood SF)
  3. Pizzaiolo, Dopo, Pizzanostra
  4. Delfina Pizzeria
  5. 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…

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think i’ll have to make a detour into SF before i leave Napa!

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If you have a hankering for pizza, yes you do.

In addition to the Neapolitan pizzas, I would add the following in our neck of the woods for “cheap” pizza:

  1. Gioia in North Berkeley, a NY style pie that is delicious. Terrific crisp but foldable crust, top notch ingredients. Can buy by the slice or whole pie. My favorite.

  2. Lanesplitter’s (3 locations but we go to the Temescal - Telegraph Ave location) - thin crust, well cooked and flavorful, with very good ingredients. Some fun pies with various motorcycle themed names. A very simple but tasty salad.

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Aight, i’ve decided on my drive up to Napa I’m going to make one stop and get one of those pizzas and on my drive back from Napa I’m going to make another stop.

All in Oakland of course!

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Tony,

thanks for the write up…I’ve been wanting to try flout + water…do you have an opinion on the pizzas @ Jupiter Brewery…went there a couple weeks ago and was very pleased with their pizzas…nothing earth moving, but a nice “gourmet” pie (and decent beer to boot)

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Milos - I haven’t been to Jupiter in a long time but I probably need to rectify that.

When we have a hankering for bar + pizza, we go locally to Lanesplitters. Always an interesting selection of 4-5 beers on tap plus corkage is $8 - most often waived since we share wine with our server.

One of the greatest deals around is doing an offline at Pizzaiolo for 10 or more. You get a set menu for $35 per person which includes a salad course (usually awesome), a pasta course, and UNLIMITEd pizza…corkage is $18 per bottle but still…

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I am just going to through out Pizza Za on Polk. Try it…

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and… Gaspare’s in Richmond or close. Old school Italian.

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Next time!!! [give_heart.gif]



Cheers!
Marshall [cheers.gif]

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An update to the Pizza Wars: 7/26/2009

Last night Traci, Ed Kurtzman, Michelle, Tina and Glenn descended upon Tony’s Pizza Napoletana for more pizza sampling. The pizza chef/owner is a 7 time pizza tossing world champion and has also opened a serious pizza making school at the North Beach restaurant. 3 pizza ovens and a variety of pizzas and several “crust” versions. NY, America, Sicilian and Naples. We decided for comparison’s sake we should stick to the Italian crust.

Some quick and dirty details: restaurant opened at the end of June 2009. We gave them a month to iron out any potential issues before we showed up. We showed around 5:30 pm (no reservations - they don’t take reservations) and were told there was a 6 top table but it was in the front window directly in the late afternoon sunshine - bright and hot at 5:30. Worried that we may lose the table, Traci said we’d take it and so Traci and I went and sat there while we waited for the rest to park and head over (Parking sucks in North beach). About 30 minutes in the sun was behind a building and all was just fine temp wise. Service was very friendly and casual. Our server seemed somewhat wine knowledgeable and interested in the wines we ordered and opened.

One very interesting negative note: we ordered a white Italian wine off the list. It was slightly corked but noticeable. The server thinks that’s the way the way tastes/smells but Ed offered up the “Ed Challenge”. Bring a new bottle and if it tastes the same as the first, he’d buy both. She accepts and brings a new bottle and voila much nicer…the bar manager/sommelier comes over and says he tasted it and thought it was okay…so he said he would take the bottle and offer it to someone at the bar if they thought it was okay, he’d sell it by the carafe to the restaurants. Basically saying he’d sell a corked/flawed wine if the customers couldn’t tell the difference…not cool in my opinion.

The food: a couple of appetizers were ordered. The calamari was ordered calabrese style which meant it would be a little spice. It was terrificly flavored and fresh with just enough kick at the back end with a nice spicy dipping sauce. We also ordered the heirloom tomato bruschetta which was awesome as well. It was on a very thinly sliced/toasted baguette and mounded rather high in a diced/cube with a nice drizzle of oil oil, herbs. We really liked the thin baguette with the very fresh tomatoes…another winner.

On to the pizza: they only serve 73 Margherita pizzas per day for some reason so we promptly ordered that and a clam garlic pizza. For me the clam garlic pizza crust was the best of the night. Thin, chewy, airy and just enough crispness while the clams and garlic were subtle and tasty. I could have eaten a ton of this pizza. The Margherita was another winner. The tomato sauce was so tangy, light and flavorful, the crust a little thicker but chewy and tasty…although I would have preferred the thinner garlic crust. Still we were off to a great start.

Next up: arugula, heirloom cherry tomatoes and prosciutto. Similar crust to the Margherita with the same tangy tomato sauce. I loved the interplay of the cherry tomatoes and arugula but I thought it may have been a little under prosciutto’d. And my slice could have used a little more arugula…And then to keep Ed happy (and well me too), we ordered the Salsiccia (fresh Italian sausage). This may have been my second favorite pizza. The sausage was really tasty and married well with the cheese, tangy tomato sauce…just a very nice pizza.

Lastly, we decided that a Sicilian pizza looked good but needed to have it on the Neapolitan crust. The aged balsamic, prosciutto, heirloom cherry tomatoes and fresh burratta pizza. This one took about 20 minutes to come out and we did here some order after us but to be told it was sold out. Almost like a dessert pizza. The balsamic added a nice sweetness that paired with the burratta well. I really enjoyed this pizza but again could have used a little more or maybe a little more flavorful prosciutto…

All in all an awesome place for pizza. Well priced (although they do have some specialty pizzas that get into the high $20 price wise) our pizzas were all $13-18 except the burratta pizza which was $25ish. The wine list very interesting and reasonably priced. Corkage was about $10 per bottle I am guessing. We opened 2 bottles and there was a corkage charge of $20 on the bill. Wine glasses plentiful and good solid glasses.

Service as mentioned was casual, knowledgeable and very accommodating.

So in the pizza rankings for SF - recent tastes:

  1. Gialina
  2. Tony’s Pizza Napoletana
  3. Nostra/Pizzaiolo/Dopo
  4. Flour + Water
  5. Delfina Pizzeria

After some reflection - I moved Flour + Water above Delfina but still just below Nostra/Pizzaiolo/Dopo. Tony’s should have moved up based upon name but I have to throw bias out…I thought the tomato sauce was the best of all of them but overall I thought the 2 pizzas at Gialina when compared to the 2 best at Tony’s were slightly better for me. Close fight though.

In early August we revisit Gialina with Ed/Michelle/Glenn/Tina since they haven’t been. We’ll take a group vote again and tally the results.

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Nice report, Tony.

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Flour + Water was very good last night, probably even more for the other food than the pizza.

Will have to retry Delfina Pizzeria, it’s in my neighborhood, but I thought it nothing special the one time I was there.

Add Pizzetta 211 at 23rd and California in the Richmond (SF) to your list of places to try.

Also, I didn’t order it, but the pizza at La Ciccia looked very good Friday night.

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Claude - thanks for the recommendations. I’ll look into both.

Delfina is disappointing, I’ll agree. As is A16 to me, but I haven’t been back to A16 in a while.

We’ll probably get two more stops in August before harvest starts for Ed. At that point pizza will be put off until post harvest…at least the pizza wars. Traci and I can still soldier on.

For those that are Facebook friends, I did put pics of the pizzas up at that site.

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Tony, can you please post them here as well?

I have just finished the SF chapter in Peter Reinharts book; American Pie, and would love to see pictures.

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Mike - I’ll give it a go but I just tried to email them to myself and save them but it saved them as Firefox downloads and WB can’t figure out the dimensions…damn. Photos were taken with my iPhone

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Tony,

Awesome CdPs last night, I absolutely loved the Old Julienne.

Looking forward to trying Gialina to see where it fits in with the other new places we’ve tried. We should also include some “older” places like Pizzetta 211 and Beretta in the mix. I used to go to Pizzetta when I lived in the Richmond. The first 4 times I tried to eat there they were either out of dough for the night (??) or they were closing early. They’re in a residential zone, so they have to be closed by 9PM. Eventually I succeeded and loved the place. But it has been so long I’m not sure where it would fit in with Nostra/Flour & Water/Tony’s.

I’ll give Delfina Pizza another try too. It’s been a year since they told my 2 winemaker friends and me that we couldn’t try our barrel samples that we brought there to have with pizza. They were in 200 ml sample bottles with screw caps. Their zero corkage policy has an absolute zero tolerance.

And there’s also my old favorite Pazzia on 3rd St.

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Ed - thanks! Always great eating pizza with you, Michelle and the rest of the gang.

Mike - best I can do on the pics right now is point you to:

http://www.tonyvelebil.shutterfly.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Password: pinot

Click on the Tony’s pizza album.

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Here we go:

Clam & Garlic

Margherita

Prosciutto, heirloom cherry tomato, arugula

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.

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And more…all from Tony’s Neapoletana Pizza in North Beach, SF, CA

Salsiccia

Aged Balsamic, burrata, prosciutto and heirloom cherry tomatoes

99 La Vieille Julienne CdP Reserve