To San Franciscans, Delfina needs no introduction. Practically a landmark by now, this 7-year old casual Cal-Italian lives the Slow Food movement's philosophy: cook locally with seasonal ingredients. Craig Stoll, the chef/owner, does just that, very simply, and very well.
Last Tuesday he and his wife, Annie, opened Pizzeria Delfina in the Mission, right next door to Delfina, something he's been wanting to do for five years. It's the latest in a veritable explosion of trendy thin-crust pizza places in the Bay Area area, from A16 to Little Star to Pizzaiolo. And it's poised to be one of the best.
Before the pizzeria opened, while it was still a mess of construction debris, I spoke to Craig to ask him about pizza in the Bay Area, stretching fresh mozzarella, what cooking Italian means, and the rocker that best embodies the pizzeria's spirit. Craig is as passionate as you'd expect a successful chef to be, but it goes beyond passion to giddiness when he talks about things that get him jazzed, like an organic flour he found. He reminded me of the proverbial kid in a candy store. His love for what he does comes across in each word, each pause.
Why a pizzeria? I’ve been spouting off about this for 5 years now. At [that] time there was a big lack of [pizza] here in San Francisco.
What do you think of the sudden explosion of pizza in San Francisco? I think it's a collective realization: "I’m looking for this great pizza that reminds me of New York or Italy," and you hear enough bitching and finally people [pay attention].
Is the state of pizza in the Bay Area improving? Could it top New York? Who cares? We are who we are. I think [San Francisco] has got to stop trying to compare itself to LA or New York or anywhere else.
Tell me about the menu. It’s Neapolitan-inspired pizzas. I took my crew to Italy in March and we worked in Naples in a couple of different pizzerias. I spent a full week there a few years ago eating pizza morning, noon and night. [The menu] is really straightforward: a Margherita with fresh stretched mozzarella...
Wait, wait, wait...what does "fresh-stretched mozzarella" mean? We buy mozzarella curd, pour hot water over the chopped-up curd and stretch and pull it and form it into balls or braids or whatever. Mozzarella is a cheese that’s meant to be eaten the day it’s made. We don’t use mozzarella di bufala because it’s shipped halfway across the world. We buy the curd from a local mozzarella manufacturer. It's [on the Delfina menu too]. We stretch it at 5:20 pm, right before we open. It’s tender and delicious.
Okay, back to the pizza. Okay, housemade fennel sausage, peppers and onions. A clam pie, with tomatoes, oregano, hot peppers, no cheese. One with broccoli rabe and Bellwether Farms ricotta cheese. A Neapolitan with anchovies, capers, olives, no cheese. We'll have six pies and two daily specials. The two daily ones will be where we get it out of our system: mussels and green garlic, porcini and dandelion or asparagus and fontina, stuff like that that’s a little more creative. Some of our stuff is kind of New York-inspired even though the pizza themselves are Neapolitan-inspired, like the clam pie. The first time I ever fell in love with clam pizza was in Lombardi’s in New York. The sausage, onions, peppers is New York. I had to get it off my chest. Everybody wants to put lamb sausage and scallions on it, you know?
Talk to me about the rest of the menu. We'll have two desserts, cannoli and baba au rhum to start. Antipasti that change daily will be reflective of the seasons, platters and bowls of it on the counter. A salad, probably a tri colore (that's arugula, raddichio and endive) with ham dressing. A bowl of fresh dressed mozzzrella doused in olive oil over arugula. A wild nettle frittata, chickpea and calamari salad, fresh cured anchovies, grilled summer squash, broccoli rabe cooked down with pine nuts and capers. (Craig asks me to hold while he talks to someone who's walked into the office. I hear him speaking Spanish and it reminds me of that article I read in the Washington Post about all the Central American immigrants who basically run the country's top kitchens.) We'll have a daily special that's “della padella” (from the pan). Every day will have its own entrée in a little cast-iron skillet. One day it’ll be eggplant parmigiana, or meatballs in ragu, mussels and clams with hot peppers.
Let's talk about the wines. I've read they're all reasonably priced. Yeah, twenty Italian wines under $45. Not all will be by the glass, but a good amount. I have this really cool custom wine unit. It keeps the reds at 57 degrees.
Any crust secrets? Pretty much what we learned to do [in Naples]. We went back and forth. We had a starter going and jumped through all these hoops to make a fermented dough, like a sourdough, but in the end we decided we like it better with a fresh yeast. We make it the night before or in the morning so it has a long slow rise. We use beautiful flour; we were going to use Tipo 0 from Italy but Charlie from Pizzaiolo tipped me off to organic flour milled in Oakland. It’s not shipped halfway around the world. I'm a little more conscious of resources.
It sounds like you've deliberately chosen locally-sourced ingredients for the pizzeria. Our food always will [have a local focus]. Italian food is about cooking with local products, with very regional and distinct cuisines. Cooking with local ingredients is more in the spirit of Italian food than importing Italian ingredients. I’m not using San Marzano tomatoes, I’m using California tomatoes –- they’re great. It’s not a conscious angle on the place, it’s just the way we cook already [at Delfina].
Tell me about the decor. It’s tiny. It’s really nice, though. Sleek, I would say, a lot of tiles, which is something we saw in every pizzeria in Naples. White tile flooring wraps up to a white tile wainscoting, tile in the kitchen. The pizza boxes will be [on display] on box racks to kill some of the echo. The boxes look like an Italian street sign. There'll be really cool music. Rock and roll.
Rock and roll means a lot of things. Are you talking Elvis? Bruce Springsteen? You'll have to wait and see.
Do you use an iPod for the music? Yeah, it’ll be on an iPod.
Can't you give me a hint on the music, Craig? Okay. If Delfina is John Coltrane, then Pizzeria Delfina is Iggy Pop.
'Nuff said.
Pizzeria Delfina, San Francisco, 3611 18th Street, 415-437-6800
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