The Last Bites of San Francisco

TRAVEL THERE: THE LAST BITES OF SAN FRANCISCO CA

The time to head south is drawing close, but let me tell you about a couple more meals in San Francisco.

Not Your Dallas Goodfellas

On Saturday night after Pinot Days we hung out at my nephew’s condo.  Confession:  I’m not good at hanging out.  I feel like I need to be DOING something – so I read while we hung.

However, I was quite happy to put down my Kindle when the Goodfellas Pizza arrived.  You need to know that a Goodfellas Pizza in San Francisco is a whole different thing than your Goodfellas Pizza in Dallas.  I haven’t been to the Dallas Goodfellas, but browsing around on the internet it was easy to tell.

The important thing to remember when ordering Goodfellas Pizza in San Francisco is that you only need to order a slice.  Heavens know what we would have gotten if we had ordered a whole pizza.  As my nephew went around taking orders, he tried to impress upon each of us that we could each have whatever we wanted, because you ordered it by the slice.  There was quite a bit of haggling as the other guys tried to convince my nephew that we should all just agree on a type of pizza and order one.  What eventually arrived was an array of huge pizza slices, but each slice was more like three slices.  There was plenty of each type of pizza and more to share.

Sunday Night at Vicoletto

There’s one more thing you need to know about the area of San Francisco called North Beach, where my nephew’s condo is located.  Another name for the area is Little Italy.  That explains why in the few days we were there we ate so much Italian food.

On Sunday night we walked to Vicoletto’s.  Like the other restaurants in the area, this is a small, neighborhood-type restaurant, greatly removed from anything resembling a chain.  Most of the world was still wherever they were after America played a playoff game in the World Cup – and it was a Sunday night.  However, Vicoletto’s was not hurting for business.

What they were suffering from was a lack of waiters.  For reasons that were never exactly clear, our waiter was the only waiter for the whole restaurant.  It might have been a small place, but it wasn’t that small.  A large party of perhaps twenty lined one side of the restaurant and then couples were sprinkled about the rest of the room.  then there was the four of us.

For being the only guy there, our waiter did a good job, but it was obvious he was stretched.  The lack of waiters had no effect at all on the food.  It came out hot and seriously delicious.  We’d brought our own wine and paid a corkage fee.  Their food and our wine made for a wonderful experience.

One of the things I liked best about my nephew’s North Beach digs is the whole walking to the restaurant experience.  the walk there whets your appetite and the walk home helps digest the food.  I like my house in Texas with a yard and garage, but there’s nothing wrong with having the world within a few blocks of your home either.

Monday morning we got up early and hit the road.  Come back next week and find out about the incredible scenery on Highway One.