Last night Traci and I joined her good friend from high school for a little pizza at Gialina Pizzeria in the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco. For those who are BART experienced, it is basically across the street on Diamond from the Glen Park BART stop (first stop past 24th St Mission heading to SFO). No real signage but the line out the door tells you that’s probably the restaurant. It is small and intimate, tastefully appointed and takes no reservations. Our wait was 1 hour but they do take your number so we walked down a couple doors to the Glen Park Bar or something like that. Had a couple beers/drinks while we waited.
We started with a salad of Star Route Farms Arugula with avocado, beets, goat cheese and pistachios. Perfectly dressed, a little cracked pepper and this was everything you want in a fairly simple salad. Fresh ingredients that play well together. I really enjoyed the avocado which I didn’t notice on the menu at first but was pleasantly surprised to find the creamy goodness playing against the goat cheese.
Next up 3 pizzas for our checking out. I will say before I start, I like their crust. It’s not the super thin/slightly blackened crust, but it is thin and has a nice chewiness to it and I did notice they alter the thickness depending on the toppings…more later.
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Potato with Applewood Smoked Bacon, red onions, rosemary and gorgonzola. The pizza crust on this was slightly thicker than the rest. Presumably to play against the gorgonzola and potato. Traci proclaimed this terrific breakfast pizza and well, that’s what it reminded me of. A nice dinner version of a breakfast item. Everything was tasty but it was probably my least favorite for that reason…it was Traci’s favorite.
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Amatriciana - tomato, Boccalone pancetta, chilis & Pecorino Romano. We had them add a Rancho Ellis organic farm egg to this one. This was my favorite. Thinner crust than the potato pizza, also cut in square to better handle the egg. I loved this pizza. It was just slightly spicy, with a nicely tangy pizza sauce and then the hit of pork from the pancetta…and finally an oozing egg to complete this pie…ahh!
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Speck with Tomato, Fresh Mozzarella, Basil & Arugula - as if the arugula salad was not enough, we got salad on a pizza. Don’t get me wrong, this was perfectly cooked. The crust was very thin, slightly burnt (in a good way) and crispier than the other two pizzas. The pizza itself was slightly drier which one would expect given the toppings. Alex loved this one but to me, while everything was fresh and good, it just lacked a little excitement to me…I still ate a couple small slices though!
All in all, the SF Pizza scene is really heating up. With Nostra, Gialina, Pizzeria Delfina and Flour + Water (which is next up to check out)…