Food Adventure Team

Exploring San Francisco, one restaurant at a time.

Archive for the 'Italian' Category

Zante Pizza

Zante Pizza

3489 Mission St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

Suggested by Josh

In attendance:
Josh
John
Eva
Heather
Peter
Violet
Leah

When I saw that this restaurant serves Indian Pizza, I was all over it. I’d heard of this phenomenon, but never actually partaken in it. Zante came highly recommended, so I looked forward to Wednesday night.

I was not disappointed. We started with two “Assorted appetizers” — each order consisted of one veggie and one meat samosa, two chicken pakoras, and two lamb (?) pakoras. And of course they came with various chutneys including the ever-present mint chutney. I must say, the appetizers were great. Bold spices, delicious meat, tender chicken. Greasy of course, but most deep fried things are.

For pizza, we ordered the extra large “Best Indian Pizza,” which has basically everything on it. It was enormous! The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming abundance of garlic. Do NOT get this pizza if you don’t like garlic! It was delicious, though. The pizza had basically everything on it. Cauliflower, shrimp, chicken, lamb, mozzarella, their special sauce (garlic), etc. It was all slathered on top of what was basically a giant naan. The naan was perfectly crisp on the bottom, and deliciously soft around the edges, as naan should be. Naan makes a perfect pizza crust, it turns out. Highly recommend dipping it in mint chutney, too.

While the pizza in general was quite tasty, I did wish that the toppings had been chopped less finely. I don’t really know what all I was eating; because everything was chopped so finely it kind of turned into mush. Delicious mush, but a more varied texture would’ve made me happier.

I also got a mango lassi, which was the brightest shade of orange I’ve ever seen on a lassi. It looked like pureed carrots! It was nice and creamy and had decent mango flavors, but it was overly sweet. Like sweet tea sweet. I prefer a bit of tartness in a lassi. Not bad though.

Conclusion: Tasty, would definitely go again– or at least order from them, since they offer free delivery to the whole city! There are things I wished they did differently, but the price (SO CHEAP) and the novelty make up for it in the end. And, pizza aside, their regular North Indian food was pretty awesome.

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Our first adventure: Beretta

Beretta

1199 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

Suggested by Icka

In attendance:
Icka
Josh
Lizzy
Leah
Ed
Heather
Devin
Jonathan

Neo-sortof-Italian place in the Mission. Incredibly tasty & worth the wait (though the 45 minute wait was frustrating, given that we had a reservation and it was freezing out).

Top-notch artisan cocktails (which caused me to break my “no drinking” rule). I got the agricole mule, and enjoyed it most out of all the drinks I tried (dolores park swizzle – delicious but SO STRONG; gaby de lys – DO NOT WANT; nuestra paloma – really fresh and yummy but also somewhat odd-tasting)

We ordered a bunch of appetizers for the table:

  • cauliflower with pangratatto, capers & sage — loved the pangratatto, capers, & sage, but found the cauliflower just too much like something mom would cook (as an ingredient)
  • bruschette of robiola & broccoli rabe (ok, that one was on the house for how long they kept us waiting even with the reservation) — not bad but not exciting either
  • chicken liver crostini alla toscana — I’m not much of a liver person, but those who are were delighted by this one.
  • gnocchi, fresh porcini mushrooms & guanciale — Holy crap delicious. Just delicious.
  • herb bread with extra virgin olive oil — so soft and fresh and cheesy and herby and yuuuuuum.

My favorites were definitely the gnocchi and the herb bread.

Among the entrees that were ordered that I tried were:

  • prosciutto di parma, tomato, arugala & mozzarella pizza — My entree. Quite tasty but not actually as exciting as I’d hoped)
  • potato, rosemary, raddichio & gorgonzola piccante pizza — Very, very interesting, sharp flavors. Extremely rich. Wouldn’t be able to eat more than one piece.
  • mozzarella, fontina & pecorino with garlic oil pizza — Had it for leftovers the next day. Was tasty but not amazing, but then again, it’d been refrigerated and reheated at that point.
  • pork saltimbocca alla romana — Quite tasty! But only had a single small bite
  • squid ink risotto with calamari Amazing! Being black from the squid ink, I expected it to be heavy, but it was very light and lemony — such an unexpected and awesome flavor/appearance clash)
  • saffron risotto with osso buco — also extremely yummy!

Conclusion: TASTY! Would definitely go back, again, and again, and again.

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