Good Pizza in the Western Addition
Whether you are a Ralph Barbieri fan that enjoys Amici's, a Berkeley-ite that swears by Zachary's, a fan of Chesh's recent discovery Pizza Fiesta, or you, like friend/idol of SFist Pim, enjoy the pies at Pizzetta 211 (after all, they carry Blue Bottle Coffee, folks), we think many people in this town agree: good pizza is not very common in the Bay Area. That's pretty much the whole list right there.
Well, now a decent pie can be found in one more place. Little Star Pizza is on 846 Divisadero Street, right at McAllister (just down the street from SFist favorite Cafe Abir), and adds another dimension to the slowly expanding options for decent pizza.
Owner/manager Brian Sadigursky* noted that SF residents constantly complain of the lack of good pizza in the city. He and his partner, owner Jon Guhl, opened Little Star last November and " . . . set out to do nothing other than good pizza."
If we may editorialize a bit, they did a few other things right as well.
(*full disclosure: a relation to the writer. Sue me.)
Garlic bread, for instance (yes, between pizza and garlic bread, we had to step away from our low-carb diet). The garlic bread is deconstructed -- for $4, you get a freshly warmed and sliced sourdough batard, some butter, and an entire bulb of roasted garlic to apply to your own preference. It's simple, but somehow very lovely. (Regarding the butter -- the menu claims it's a butter/olive oil blend; we could not tell the difference.)
Another fine appetizer--the spicy chicken wings ($7). We'd posit that, much like pizza, good wings are hard to come by here on the left coast. These are very good, though: not too greasy, nice and crispy, a bit of a kick -- with some blue cheese dressing and carrots on the side. The dressing, while pretty good, may be a bit misplaced. To our thinking, chicken wings with dressing were originated (and successful) due to the super-spicy/super-cool contrast -- these wings are not "buffalo" spicy. While it's surely just a matter of personal preference, we ate the wings "naked" and found them delicious that way.
The pizza, of course, is the star of the show. Prices for loaded pies vary; about $15 for a smaller pie and about $20 for the larger ones. It's not cheap, but neither are the obviously fresh, quality ingredients that go into them. Even if pricey for pizza, it's still much more bang for your buck than most sit-down, full service establishments in town.
The thin crust pies are fairly traditional in structure. The crust reminded us of N.Y. pizza in that it was nicely crispy throughout; no sogginess toward the middle or any such inconsistency. We tried Little Star's version of a white pie, which doesn't have tomato sauce; rather it has a few fresh tomato slices and loads of garlic and olive oil, with zucchini and feta cheese rounding it out. It was, for lack of fancy descriptions, quite good.
The deep dish has the toppings piled on backwards (as traditional deep dishes do) -- sauce on top of cheese and toppings, that is. The crust has a different taste and mouth feel -- cornmeal, we believe -- which may sound a little weird, but it works. We caved to our dinner companions' wishes and got the mediterranian chicken pizza (given our druthers, we'll always go for a something with ricotta, such as the "little star" pizza, which also has spinach. Next time.). It was good; we particularly liked the distinctive oniony taste and the perfect snappy crispness of said onions in the pizza. It was a nice touch.
Sometimes, you really do want that grease running down your hand when you eat pizza, though -- a la Famous Rays, Original Rays, Original Famous Rays, or one of those many, many "Rays" in New York where the pizza is really, really good despite being obviously greasy and bad for you. You won't find too much in the way of grease at Little Star; nor will you find that little thrill you get from eating pure junk food. This pizza will not satisfy you in that particular way. However, one of the reasons Little Star's pizza is good is because of attention to detail and fresh, quality ingredients.
On the wet side of things, Little Star offers a variety of wines and beers. They also employ one of our favorite restaurant conventions: a "happy hour" (which are few and far between it seems these days). Hours of "happy hour" are 4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.-11:30 p.m. for cheap Pabst and a discount on other drinks.
As for non-food-related things: The interior is, casual, modern and fairly minimalist. The ambiance is rather dark, but we believe that fits the sort of gen-x'er with family-ish/hipster-ish/up-and-coming-ish feel of the neighborhood in general. The jukebox is good, and also fits with what we'd suspect most of the clientele would enjoy.
Like we noted above, we are pre-prejudiced toward liking this place. However, we believe that any patron, on trying Little Star, would share our enthusiasm.
Little Star is open for dinner 5 p.m.-10 p.m. daily.