Gourmet de l'Ouest: Cybelle's Front Room
Everybody and his brother is on the lookout for the holiest of grails, the great Bay Area Pizza. Cybelle's Front Room is not that pizza, we'll be the first to admit. There is nothing going on at Cybelle's to attract fancy-pants food pundits, or even non-fancy-pants food pundits. We don't care, we like it anyway.
Some dear friends of ours, since moved from the Bay Area to graduate programs in fields we only pretend to understand, used to convene semi-regular get-togethers at 9th and Irving's Front Room (now part of the Cybelle's chain, but does not seem to have changed after the aquisition), and we'd always come away from these dinners far happier and more satisfied than we have from far more upscale dining experiences.
It's not that the pizza at Cybelle's is horribly bad or anything. It's perfectly workmanlike pizza ($12-23 bucks, depending on the size and number of toppings), because it's pretty tough to screw up melted cheese on bread (though we have seen it happen). They offer several salads we're just to macho to have ever tried, as well as a host of other typical pizza-place entrees. When we go, however, we go for the pizza, accompanied by fabulous pitchers of beer ($7.95-9.95, with nightly specials), and we always leave happy.
Sure, a lot of it is the company -- we've always gone to the Front Room with a good-sized group of folks, and do not recommend it for that important third-date deal-closing romantic dinner. In fact, any time we're there, we note that most of the parties there are large ones, shoving together tables, laughing boisterously, and asking the staff to divide the check in some arcane geometric fashion.
We think our fondness is partially rooted in nostalgia, as Cybelle's reminds us of some of our favorite undergraduate hang-outs, complete with massive amounts of reasonably-prices carbs, beer by the pitcher, and many of the same friends (god, we're old). But there's more to Cybelle's than just our hankering for a time when we were blonde and didn't have to be at work by 8:30, we sincerely believe. Their consistently acceptable food, their willingness to accomodate large parties, and the observation that everyone else we see eating at Cybelle's is having a good time, too, informs our desire to recommend Cybelle's Front Room for your next bargain-basement big-crowd Westside dining experience. And if that's not enough for you, how about their free-Wi-Fi?
Cybelle's Front Room
1385 9th Avenue @ Judah
Phone: 665-8088
Sunday to Thursday 11am to 11pm
Friday and Saturday 11am to Midnight
Pricepoint is inexpensive, but the beer can add up
Parking is moderately tough, but you can usually find it in the park and walk up the two blocks. You're going to eat a ton of food so you can use the exercise.