My friend and I decided to try it out for lunch last weekend, and boy am I glad we did!

Here’s the outside. The Star is on Grand Ave, probably the last exciting thing on the street before it turns residential. Parking can be quite hellish in this neighborhood, just an FYI. You might have to park up the up the big hill on Elmwood (free) if there are no spots on Grand.

This is what it looks like when you walk in… There’s another dining area directly to the right (not pictured), that faces the street.

We started off with the Greek salad. It’s salty and tangy, and big enough to share.

They have roasted Brussels sprouts on the appetizer menu! They come covered in parmesan cheese and sprinkled with bacon.  They’re sooo good (I ate the whole bowl), I’m a huge weirdo for brussels sprouts.

You can order a personal size pizza during lunch hours, so I ordered a personal sized Golden Gate pizza. The Golden Gate features meatballs, ricotta, onions, and fresh mozzarella.

The pizza came out piping hot, plenty of steam. The mozzarella is baked into the crust, then the meatballs are sliced flat underneath the globs of ricotta. The meatball is sliced pretty thin and there’s a meatball slice on each piece of pizza.  The meatball itself is on the denser side. As you can see, the sauce is very thick. The sauce is sweet and savory, and chunky. I probably should have eaten my pizza with a fork and knife, but I picked it up and ate it with my hands (no shame).  The amount of sauce was a little overwhelming so I scraped some of it off… the crust is thick, crispy, sweet, corny and amazing.

Would I return? Definitely.

Have you been to The Star? How did you like it?

The Star on Grand
3425 Grand Ave, Oakland, CA 94610
www.thestarongrand.com

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If you haven’t been before, it’s located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of SF, down south of the ballpark. It’s not really a place many people go to unless they work or live down there, but I’m telling you, if you want great pizza, go to Piccino.

I started off with a nice, cold and refreshing iced tea. It was really good – house made and had some kind of floral essence that I could not identify.

We arrived at 2:30, right before their lunch cutoff time of 3pm, that’s why it was empty. Piccino closes daily at 3pm for lunch and re-opens at 5pm for dinner.

The first time I ever ate at Piccino I ordered a bianca pizza with english peas, I’ll never forget it. It was a daily special so they don’t have it on the regular menu, but the regular bianca pizza (parmesan, pecorino, mozzarella, shaved garlic, chili oil) is the same thing minus the peas.

Here’s the pizza! It’s large enough to share with someone (plus a salad or other side), or you can just eat it yourself. I really wanted to order my own pizza, but ended up sharing this one instead.

What sets Piccino pizza apart from other bay area pizzas is the dough and crust. The crust at Piccino is absolutely perfect. It is thin, firm, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and it has a wonderful sweet flavor that is reminiscent of authentic east coast pizza. Piccino pizza does NOT flop. You can hold a slice in your hand and it will stand straight out. Real hard to come by in the Bay Area.

Here is the burrata salad (early girl tomatoes, burrata, crispy polenta, watercress, red wine vinegar) that comes on top of a crispy polenta cake and tomatoes. It was AMAZING!  The polenta cake was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and it was super savory and salty – absolutely perfect.

I really love Piccino. There’s nothing I don’t like about it, in fact I’ve never had anything I didn’t like from this restaurant. The food is spectacular, the pizza is as perfect as it can get, the restaurant is clean and modern, and the service is great.

They also have tables outside that you can sit at and bring your dog too if you want (I’ve brought Harley there before).

In a nutshell, if you’re from the mindset that Delfina has the best pizza you’ve ever had, go to Piccino and you’ll change your mind real fast.

Piccino
1001 Minnesota St
San Francisco, CA 94107
website

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Jamba Juice’s website describes this flatbreadas:

A thick and crispy crust topped with BBQ chicken, smokehouse roasted sweet corn, black beans, poblano chilies, red bell peppers, and a combination of mozzarella and cheddar.

First of all, the description does hold true however it’s not really a flatbread… it’s a freakin pizza, freakin A!  And this pizza was pretty much the biggest disappointment of my TGIF.  After I ordered the pizza, I saw the guy go into the back and walk out with a tiny round frozen pizza wrapped in cellophane.  He had to unwrap it before putting it into the oven, which took about 3 minutes to heat up.

A small 7-8″ or so pizza box was handed over to me with a tiny baby pizza inside.  I couldn’t wait to get back to the office to eat it so I set it on top of a huge tree planter outside the Jamba Juice building to take a pic of it before it got slammed it down my fryhole.

I wish I had something in the photo to help show scale.  I think this pizza is only about 6″ round.  It’s pretty tiny, no wonder there are supposedly only 300 calories.

Here’s another pic, closer up.  Sorry the quality is off, iPhone camera to blame (I doctored the pics up a bit before they made it in into the blog tho).

Yeah, so the pizza looks all hot and cooked through however it was hardly lukewarm when I took a bite.  The pizza was gone in about 2 minutes, more or less… since I was freakin starving.  I finished it while walking 1 San Francisco block.  The flavors are all there but the crust is kind of airy and dough-y.  It’s not super flavorful (maybe it’s because it wasn’t too warm) and again the size really threw me off.

For some reason from all the photos of these pizzas, I kind of got into my mind that they were cornmeal crust or something – THEY ARE NOT CORNMEAL CRUST, they just have the shape of most cornmeal crust pizzas (like the ones at Trader Joe’s anyway).

I probably won’t be eating another one of these pizzas in the near future… sorry Smokehouse Chicken Flatbread, I’m still hungry.

74 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 597-5546
www.jambajuice.com

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Once I had that hot slice in my little paw, I scarfed that whole thing down before I got to the corner of 17th st.  I’m serious, this pizza is amazing.  I’m a big pizza person – grew up in the burbs of PA and have been eating italian food my whole life… in PA, NJ, NYC…  Arinell knows how to make some freaking good pizza.

Something I really like about it is that they heat up every slice… they heat it up just perfectly, so that the bottom is crisp.  It’s not so crisp that the slice is completely firm, but just enough to give each bite a little crunch.  The crust is soft and a little bit sweet… oh, that pizza is just heaven!

It may look like there isn’t too much cheese on there, but believe me, there is.

Arinell
509 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 255-1303

The post Arinell Pizza: NY Style The BEST! The BEST! appeared first on Fryhole.

Besides awesome pastries, La Boulange also has a nice little menu of breakfast and lunch items like eggs, sandwiches and salads.  I opted for a cup of the Soup du Jour – Potato Leek, a Breakfast Pizza with Bacon and a Nonfat Latte.

This is the kind of place where you order at the counter, get a number and find a place to sit.  Then you sit down and wait for your food to be delivered.  We waited a little while and then the soup came first.  It was pretty good — not quite as sweet as I expected it to be, but nonetheless, good.  The soup came with a little slice of french bread which was really good. Once the bread was gone I really had no reason to continue eating the soup, but I did anyway… just because.

Above is the breakfast pizza with bacon.  It is very interesting… basically the crust is a sweet flakey phyllo-ish kind of dough, topped with melted cheese, diced tomatoes, chunks of bacon and finally some scrambled eggs (oh, then sprinkled with chopped parsley i think?).  I usually cut it in slices the short way and eat.  It is very good and filling.  The buttery-ness of the crust and eggs mixed with the smokey saltiness of the bacon is the perfect combo and worth every bite.  I’ve had it twice so far.

This is a “real” latte.  Drink it right from the bowl.

La Boulange
500 Hayes St
(between Laguna St & Octavia St)
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 863-3376
www.baybread.com

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We started off with the Spinich Artichoke Dip.  I swear this dip has drugs in it because I end up gobbling up the whole bowl in seconds.  It’s so good and so greasy… it comes with white and blue super salty corn chips.  If I could afford to get this (it’s about $10) everytime I went to CPK and if didn’t add to the growing ring of fat around my stomach I would.

Above is the Sweet & Spicy Italian Sausage Pizza.  It’s good (for being frozen), and the crust is unmistakably CPK – buttery, soft and sweet (nothing crispy or flaky about this pizza, sorry).  My only gripe is that there are too many onions on it!!!

California Pizza Kitchen
524 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 436-9380
www.cpk.com

[ratings]

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