Packed from day one: New Flour+Water Pizzeria hits North Beach
Truth be told, I’ve always been about chefs Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow’s Italy-worthy pastas at Flour + Water even more than the pizza at Flour + Water Pizzeria, which closed in the Mission last summer 2022 and is now Yellow Moto Pizzeria. I still am most devoted to that original 2009 spot that started it all as a pasta-pizza combo restaurant, reborn early 2022, better-than-ever as a pasta haven deserving of a Michelin star.
But Flour + Water Hospitality Group’s new Flour + Water Pizzeria just opened June 28, 2023, in North Beach in the former Rose Pistola space, an Italian favorite since I moved here in 2001, and of so many San Francisco longtimers. It’s heartwarming to see life in the 4,000 square foot space again after six years (!), located on a prime block of Columbus Ave. And it’s already packed every night, even early on a Tuesday, when my partner Dan (“The Renaissance Man”) and I went in to check it out. Lunch just kicked off Monday, July 17, so get ready for all-day crowds.
Did North Beach — SF’s bastion of Italian immigrants and culture for over 100 years — really need another pizza restaurant? In theory, no. Just around the corner is truly the-best-in-the-country Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, with daily lines confirming the greatness of Tony Gemignani’s Neapolitan, NY and NJ-style, St. Louis-style and more pizzas, cooked in different ovens with different dough and sauce recipes for each meticulous style. Ditto nearby Capo’s, his temple to Chicago and Detroit-style pizzas. There are other pizza spots, not to mention a slew of red sauce Italian restaurants, like OG Original Joe’s, all within a few blocks of F+W Pizzeria.
But digging in here reveals strengths and delights you don’t find everywhere in the neighborhood and why it’s another worthy new addition to the long list of great pizza and endless list of high quality casual SF does so well. It’s also a more evolved version of their original F+W Pizzeria in the Mission. Complete with a separate F+W Pizza Shop for takeout and delivery (enter on the backside at 1533 Stockton Street), a Dough Room and, next to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, a fridge packed with their own F+W wines and drinks to-go (just saying: ideal for Washington Square Park picnics a block away), this huge space is a whole new thing.
While Flour + Water pastas transports me back to Emilia-Romagna, Italy, but with creative, modern, SF Bay Area vision, F+W Pizzeria is a crowd-pleasing pizzeria with a little something for everyone, the kind of place you could bring visiting family of all ages, as you could a group of friends. It’s loud and buzzy, but not so loud you have to shout, and there is a large booth or bar seating if you wander in solo.
It’s hard to resist mozzarella sticks dipped in marinara or a side of ranch if you want to go nuts. All the childhood feels, especially with cocktails (just kidding). Seriously, a Pineapple Daiquiri blessedly subtle on the pineapple, served up in a coupe glass with Diplomatico Rum, Amaro Montenegro, lime and toasted sesame adding nutty intrigue, is a happy partner with cheesy sticks.
Dive into salads, and that’s when gourmet precision with casual ease shows up. An of-the-season stone fruit and fennel salad shows off our stunning local apricots and peaches with fluffy ricotta, crumbled pistachios and lemon oil. A “Summer Chop” is less like beloved, heavy chopped salads from my Jersey youth, loaded with cheese, salami, pepperoncini and crappy iceberg lettuce. This is a damn good salad of quality greens and seasonal veggies with, yes, pepperoncinis, chickpeas, provolone and parm frico (Parmesan crisped up in crunchy bits) in light but creamy Italian dressing.
Shrimp scampi is another youthful fave I don’t see on hip menus much anymore. Trust Pollnow and McNaughton to do it right. Plump, head-on shrimp are teeming (but not too much) in garlic slivers and butter, lemon and a douse of chilies. We savored them with a Melone cocktail, slate-y with a Del Maguey Vida mezcal base, but fresh honeydew juice, lime, tarragon and a touch of limoncello ushering the drink into refreshing, herbaceous territory. Elmer Mejicanos’ cocktail list is fun and tight. Boozy Slushies rotate but our version was orange juice and passionfruit’s tropical sweetness tempered by bitter Martini Fiero Aperitivo and Don Julio Tequila.
Though the wine list is short compared to Flour + Water or the group’s casual pasta and crudo spot, Penny Roma, wine director Samuel Bogue is still bringing it with a streamlined list in his usual comprehensive cross-sections covering crisp to textured whites, light to full reds, orange, sparkling and rosé wines. There are 10 wines by the glass, and two of them are Flour + Water bottlings: an orange, funky but-not-too-funky, Malvasia (“Pasta Water”), and a chilled, earthy red blend (“Pasta Sauce”), both California grapes, both 2022 bottlings. With cool, colorful labels, this house wine line is worth spending the evening on alone. There are other treats on the menu, from local Hammerling Chardonnay to berry-forward 2021 Horus “Sol e Terra” Frappato from Sicily. A couple local draft beers, canned beers and ciders and NA (non-alcoholic) sodas and beer round out drink offerings.
What about the pizza? With ⅓ of the menu starters and salads, ⅔ of it is pizza under red or white pies, with 10 different pies, plus add-ons like pickled jalapenos, hot honey or white anchovies. As their dough rises for three days, it’s a lighter dough than traditional Neapolitan with some East Coast influence. In a massive Pizza Master electric pizza oven, it’s also a longer, lower bake at 600 degrees instead of the typical Neapolitan 900 degrees. Aged mozzarella goes on first, giving pizzas and almost crispy firmness, while the crust hovers somewhere between airy and crunchy.
On the white pizza side, cacio e pepe is already a bestseller, they tell me, an ode to the beloved Roman pasta dish. But we went straight for the OG Osso, unctuous with bone marrow, hence its name (“osso” means “bone”). Occasionally served at their original pizzeria, here it’s limited each day and only available dining-in (no takeout). Despite its rich, fatty notes, fresh mozzarella, garlic, mustard greens and shavings of fresh horseradish keep it bright, as does the pizza’s thin crispiness. Pesto, mushrooms and fennel sausage weave through the white pie picks, but we couldn’t not order a red sauce pie, too.
The red sauce side of the pizza menu moves from burrata purity to smoky eggplant or meaty pepperoni with Mama Lil’s fab peppers. Again, Dan and I had to go for interesting. Though Hawaiian pizza has had a renaissance these days — and is done poorly by so many — this is Hawaiian pizza with an oh-so-San-Francisco Chinese nod of Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp from Chengdu on top. Not unlike Che Fico’s unbeatable pineapple fermented chiles pizza, the pineapple is blessedly paper-thin sliced on a meat slicer layered with capicola Italian salumi, fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and pickled Fresno chiles lifting it with a bright-tart note. This is not Che Fico’s pineapple pizza masterpiece, but it’s one gratifying pizza.
There may be other pizzas I love more in a city where we’re spoiled silly with superb pizzas (just a couple of the latest national lists heavy with SF spots include Food & Wine’s top 28 and Italy’s Top 50 Pizza U.S. list). But F+W’s pizzas are no slouch in the pizza game. Strengths lie in their most playful or unusual pies like the OG Osso.
Dessert is blessedly simple but with a range of toppings: fior di latte or salted caramel soft serve — or my pick: swirl. Toppings include chocolate cookie crumble, Amarena cherries, rainbow sprinkles, olive oil and sea salt and brown butter cereal crunch. Mejicanos’ Biscotti Espresso Martini does just as well for dessert. Ubiquitous (and tired) Tito’s Vodka is the base, but espresso liquor, Biscotti liqueur and a bracing coffee ensure a happily unsweet, earthy imbibement with a nice whisper of creamy biscotti cookie.
As we rolled out into the night with North Beach blessedly buzzy on a Tuesday, we headed a couple blocks down Columbus Avenue for live jazz and a nightcap at Comstock Saloon — among the wealth of classic and superb bars in North Beach. It felt like “old SF,” like pre-pandemic, but not in a nostalgic, of-the-past way.
Amid exaggerated national news and unwarranted vitriol towards our city (clearly many need a scapegoat for their frustrations with our nation), in large part by people who haven’t been in here in years or who only hit downtown and not the neighborhoods that make up most of the city and where most of us live, North Beach remains alive and vibrant.
It’s diverse, colorful, a mashup of tourists and locals, late night and quirky in that only-in-SF way, from live music pouring out of divey, 1861 treasure, The Saloon, to day-into-night crowds lingering in magical Washington Square Park under the towering white of Saints Peter and Paul Church. Right in the middle of it all, the new Flour + Water Pizzeria, with Rose Pistola’s original Italian tile on the floor, feels fresh and new without forgetting its roots, welcoming all with easy deliciousness.
// 532 Columbus Avenue, www.fwpizzeria.com
Virginia Miller is a San Francisco-based food & drink writer.
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