San Francisco neighbourhood food tour: Best places to eat and drink in North Beach

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This was published 7 years ago

San Francisco neighbourhood food tour: Best places to eat and drink in North Beach

By Brian Johnston
Tommaso's in San Francisco.

Tommaso's in San Francisco.Credit: Billy Cole

I've never before started a culinary tour in a tunnel beneath a brothel, and I'm rather pleased at this first. The tunnel is really just a concrete passageway hidden behind a door, but I imagine girls in feathers and frilly drawers fleeing the police, and bootleggers hauling whisky during Prohibition. This building once housed the Red Mill, later tarted up as the Moulin Rouge. Later still it was the Hippodrome, where flappers danced and cocktails flowed.

San Francisco has always had a rather louche reputation, not really justified these days: the brothel tunnel now lies beneath a staid artists' supply store, though raunchy plaster satyrs still chase after naked nymphs on its facade. But long before hippie Haight-Asbury and gay Castro, this area defined notoriety. North Beach is one of San Francisco's oldest districts, nicknamed the "Barbary Coast" for its early opium dens and saloons. It was a man's rough world of shanghaied sailors, gold rushers and drifters who kick-started the city's reputation for anarchic hedonism.

By the 1890s Pacific Street was erupting with jazz bars and dance clubs such as the Hippodrome, and in the 1950s the Beat Generation gave North Beach a new bohemian, counter-culture reputation as its writers explored sex, drugs and anti-materialism. In the midst of the merriment, Italian immigrants moved in with their Catholic morality, family values and pizza shops. Out of this clash of cultures, a thoroughly contemporary San Francisco neighbourhood was born.

Spinach and parmesan pizza from Tommaso's.

Spinach and parmesan pizza from Tommaso's.

Appropriately enough, my guide Margherita Ventura of Avital Food Tours is Italian. The first Italian immigrants arrived in North Beach as early as the 1870s, she explains, though she's a more recent arrival who grew up in Florence. She's the perfect guide, however, whose Italian chattiness and food appreciation combines with new-settler enthusiasms and nostalgia. "The Italian immigrants have long dispersed, but Italian-American families still run businesses here," she says. "Those evenings of coffee and people-watching along Grant and Columbus avenues provide a lingering flavour of Italy."

Our first taste of food is on Columbus Avenue at Comstock Saloon. It has pedigree: opened in 1870, when it was surely a scrappy joint of hard-drinking whiskey guzzlers. Now it's a rather beautiful, perhaps over-restored cocktail bar whose suave bartenders wear striped waistcoats and Wild West moustaches. Paddle fans pirouette on the ceiling, and polished wood gleams. Trendy young San Franciscans nibble on oysters and rabbit, but Margherita is having none of that: scotch eggs and pickles, she says, were the typical snack in the old days. They turn out to be scrumptious accompaniment to our pisco punch with lime and pineapple; Comstock Saloon does a fine line in classic pre-Prohibition cocktails.

As we head up Columbus Avenue, Margherita points out several venues associated with the Beat Generation: Vesuvio Cafe, where Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac hung out, and City Lights Booksellers, its triangular building still crammed with paperbacks. Along the Broadway Street intersection, a row of strip joints provides a fading reminder of the district's earlier reputation. As we settle in for another progressive food course at nearby Tommaso's, however, the walls are prim with scenes of the Amalfi Coast and Bay of Naples.

San Francisco's North Beach district.

San Francisco's North Beach district.

The advantage of an insider's food tour is that you get to meet the restaurant owners. Margherita is soon introducing us to Agostino Crotti, who has a rich line in improbable anecdotes. In his youth he was an altar boy for Pope Paul VI; he made coffee for Francis Ford Coppola when he was writing the screenplay for The Godfather; George Lucas often pops into for a pizza. He adds that he had a bit part in the 2012 telemovie Hemingway and Gellhorn, starring Nicole Kidman. "The director wanted an old, fat ugly chef, so they asked me. They asked my sister to be an ageing hooker, but I think she was offended."

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The restaurant is a family affair: Agostino's sisters are chef and maitre d, his wife Anna makes the desserts. The pizza menu has scarcely changed since the family took over Tommaso's in the 1970s, though there are a more vegetarian options and one pizza features burrata, the mozzarella-and-cream blend lately all the rage in San Francisco. "But you'll never see pineapple, bacon or truffle on my pizzas,'' sniffs Agostino.

We divide a pizza up between our little tour group. The crust has a crispy bite to it, and is mottled with scorching from the oven. (In 1935, Tommaso's was the first restaurant on the US west coast to have a wood-burning oven). It's as good as pizza crust gets, blackened and puffed up, both chewy and crunchy, but the toppings seem overloaded with cheese in the American way, and rather greasy. Tommaso's, I suspect, relies on its reputation, retro Italian-immigrant decor and garrulous charms of its owner.

 Cavalli Italian pastry cafe.

Cavalli Italian pastry cafe.Credit: Avital Food Tours

Later in the afternoon, we'll head into Cinecitta on Union Street. "Owner Romina Tiberia started off in her grandfather's pizza restaurant in Rome, and I think it's one of the most authentic Roman eateries in the city,'' says Margherita. Certainly its pizzas have a lightness and flavour that seems straight out of Italy to me. The prosciutto is juicy, the cheese chewy, pulling out in unctuous strings that curl around my fork. The pizza is flecked with black pepper and bubbling red tomato sauce. No wonder Gina Lollobrigida is smiling from the wall, along with a cohort of other old-time Italian movie stars.

In between pizzas, we stop at Ferry Plaza Seafood right next door to Cinecitta for shucked oysters, little dishes of chowder, and clams steamed in Chardonnay with leeks and pancetta. This is a very up-to-date eatery, draped in marble and walnut, with gold-leaf salmon swimming across the wall and well-dressed people perching on stools at a raw bar. Big plate windows give onto the busy street. Across Columbus Avenue is Washington Square, with its statue of Benjamin Franklin and Romanesque-style church outside which Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were photographed in 1954 in their wedding finery. "Though they actually got married at city hall," mutters Margherita.

The afternoon is almost over as we finish our tour at Cavalli Cafe on Stockton Street, which provides well-needed coffee after numerous glasses of wine. Owner Santolo Esposito has recently branched out into panini and salads, explains Margherita, but for years he did nothing but coffee and four kinds of pastry. "But you'd still come here for the cannoli, tiramisu or torta della nonna."

Bartender Jonny at Comstock Saloon with his pisco punch.

Bartender Jonny at Comstock Saloon with his pisco punch.

This is the kind of place you need to be on a tour to discover: as drab as a cafeteria, bereft of decor, though Santolo himself embodies Italian good looks behind the bar. We order cannoli, one of my favourites, and I'm pleased to see Santolo stuffs the tubes on the spot with ricotta studded with chocolate chips and orange zest. Both the coffee and the cannoli are perfection, and I'm as happy as a shore-leave sailor in a brothel. Which in old-time North Beach was surely very happy indeed.

TRIP NOTES

MORE INFORMATION

A cannoli from Cavalli.

A cannoli from Cavalli.Credit: Avital Food Tours

sanfrancisco.travel

GETTING THERE

United Airlines has direct flights from both Melbourne (16 hours) and Sydney (14.5 hours) to Los Angeles, with domestic connections to San Francisco (one hour). United also flies direct from Sydney to San Francisco (15 hours). Phone 131 777, see united.com

Group on an Avital Food Tour at the corner of Columbus and Broadway.

Group on an Avital Food Tour at the corner of Columbus and Broadway.

TOURING THERE

Avital Food Tours has various culinary-themed walking tours across San Francisco neighbourhoods. Its guided three-hour, four-course North Beach tour costs US$84 ($117) per person. Phone +1 415 355 4044, see avitaltours.com

STAYING THERE

Loews Regency San Francisco has a central location, superb harbour views from many rooms and knowledgeable concierges. Rooms start from US$479 ($695) a night. Phone +1 415 276 9888, see loewshotels.com/regency-san-francisco/

Brian Johnston travelled as a guest of Scenic and San Francisco Travel.

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