Flour + Water

What is with all these new pizza places opening up in the Mission? First there was Beretta, and now Flour + Water which has the same concept. Gourmet Italian food and thin crust pizzas.

We went to Flour + Water as part of my extended birthday celebrations. After Radio Africa Kitchen on Friday, my girl friends took me to Flour+Water on Saturday. This is why your birthday should fall on a weekend :) Apparently this place is crazy popular, the only reservation they had available was for 10:30 pm. So, we decided to try out luck and show up there anyway, since they hold half their tables for walk-ins.

We were seated pretty promptly, and our server was this really sweet Asian girl. I think we were starving... we ordered a salad with avocado, marinated beans and some kind of lettuce, two margherita pizzas and two pastas - between 3 girls. In our defense though, the pasta was tiny, and the pizzas really thin, and Grace was hungry after her triathlon. Anyway... the food was pretty good, I think the pizzas at Beretta are better, but the pastas were good. I think the highlight of the meal for me was dessert - no surprise there :) We got a pistachio and honey kulfi kind of thing, with cherries... quite delicious.

So... I don't know what I think of Flour+Water. It didn't impress me so much that I'm dying to go back, but it didn't unimpress me so much that I wouldn't go back.

http://flourandwater.com/

Beretta

Beretta has been the talk of the Mission restaurant scene for the past several months. I've walked past it so many times and thought to myself - why on earth is this restaurant so crowded? I knew I had to try it myself to figure out if it was worth all the hype. And I did just that - twice in one week. I guess I really liked it :)

So what is it about this place that has people willing to wait over an hour for a table?!? Well to start with they have amazing amazing cocktails, with some very unique names. I had the Airmail - gin, lime, cane juice topped with bitters. That was one good cocktail, so good in fact that I had it when I went back the second time.

On to the food now - nice cocktails are all good, but the most important thing about any restaurant is the food. And beretta does food well! The menu is Italian, lots of small plates, a few salads, risottos, but the thin crust pizzas are definitely the star of the show. If you think Delfina's pizza is awesome, you are absolutely going to love the pizza here. I highly recommend the pizza with the spicy marinara and pepperoncini - it's the most amazingly simple, tangy, spicy, flavor in each bite pizza. The funghi one is pretty good too. And did you know that egg on pizza tastes awesome - who would have thought? Ok so there's all this good food and all these great cocktails, but in these tough economic times (I just had to throw that in :)) the question is "Is dinner here going to burn a hole in my pocket?" The answer to that is "somewhat" - beretta is definitely not a cheap eat, but 30 buks could get you a couple of drinks and a filling meal. Thats not so bad i think. And if you share with friends even better!

So far everything sounds perfect, doesn't it? There is a but though - there always is. It's the noise - don't even think of going here if you want to have a conversation with the person you are with. So first dates are a complete no-no here. This restaurant is loud! I mean lip reading loud - theres music blaring, people talking, people shouting, you get the picture.

In summary, beretta is definitely worth a visit, my tip though is to either get there really early or really late. It'll save you from the extremely long wait and may also spare your ear drums from getting blown off!

A16

Yay... it just hit me that I have, in the past week, done exactly what I set out to do when this blog was created. And in case you are wondering what that groundbreaking thing was - it was to go through all(seriously?) the restaurants in the 2007 Michelin guide for San Francisco. I went to four of them last week - and what makes it even more fabulous is that it happened quite inadvertently.

Let me start with A16 - it's an Italian restaurant in the Marina that's wildly popular. So much so, that on a Tuesday night, we could only get reservations for 9:30pm. Their food is supposed to be excellent, and their wine list pretty impressive. But, I have to say... I was not blown away by the place. Maybe my expectations were too high.. maybe it's not the best place for vegetarians... maybe we ordered the wrong wine... maybe.

We started out with an arugula salad with olives and mandarin oranges. So, here's the thing about me and salad - I don't want to feel like a cow chewing grass when I'm eating my salad. I mean I am eating leaves, but it shouldn't feel like I'm eating leaves... makes sense? Anyway, after a very disappointing salad, we got a not-so-disappointing funghi pizza. The pizza was good... not awesome, but decent enough. As usual what saved the day was dessert - their most popular dessert is the "Chocolate budino tart with sea salt and extra virgin olive oil". The EVOO and sea salt added an interesting twist to the flavor, and the mousse was just perfect - the next time I think I'll skip directly to dessert.

Ok.. so I really didn't mean to slam this place so much. It is an awesome place to go on a date - the dining room is gorgeous, all candles and brick walls. It's romantic, but at the same time, not oppressively so - the crowd and the atmosphere make sure of that. And I guess if you know your wine (which clearly I don't) the experience will be better.

http://www.a16sf.com/home.html

Panta Rei

I've been to 3 really nice places in the past week... not bad, after the 2 week lull.

This first one, I'm not sure would have even got a review from me otherwise, but this sweet little boy I know, can't stop raving about it. So... I guess I owe it a review.

Panta Rei is an Italian restaurant, on Columbus Ave. - one among many, many Italian restaurants in North Beach. As with most restaurants in the area, it's open late, so that's a plus. We got there pretty late, around 11pm, and Columbus was bustling as usual. It was a really nice night, so we got a seat outside next to the heat lamp, ordered some Chardonnay, and settled down to enjoy a nice, late dinner.

Which brings me to the food.... So, the one thing to die for, for any vegetarian diner here is the Spinach gnocchi (or at least that's what the sweet little boy claims). So, that's what we had... and a margherita pizza. Now, in my experience you really can't go wrong with a margherita pizza - tomato sauce, cheese, and basil. How much simpler can it get? But... this pizza, it just didn't do it for me... too much cheese, too little flavor. I was full with just one slice. The gnocchi on the other hand was pretty darn good... it had a nice cream sauce, lots of garlic, and lots of flavor. And it went well with the Chardonnay.

So there... that's my kind of blah review of Panta Rei. Did I loooove it? Probably not. Would I recommend it? Probably yes.... if you sit outside, with a nice glass of wine, and good company.

http://www.pantareirestaurant.com/