The East-Bay Pizza Round-Up: Cheeseboard, Zachary’s and Gioia
We think a lot about pizza here at SFist, maybe a little too much. And since San Francisco has some pretty good pizza, we were a little nervous to move out to the East Bay. (Golden Boy, we don’t mind that you’re in North Beach, you can do no wrong with your clam pizza.)
But as we continue to search for the perfect pizza true to our east coast roots (our hearts belong to New Haven, CT brick ovens), we are happy to report that what we’ve found here in the Eastern Bay is much better than we expected. Certainly better than some of the latest thin crust impostor pizzas in the city (that’s right, we said it. Sorry Little Star, but you are over-hyped).
First up - Cheeseboard: Anytime we mention our new move to Berkeley, someone asks us if we’ve tried Cheeseboard yet. People are crazy about Cheeseboard out here, a little enclave in North Berkeley on Shattuck. It’s a worker-owned collective, so you can feel socially-responsibly while you eat your slice.
But most important, is the pizza worth the love? And the answer is yes. Yes, Cheeseboard pizza is good. However, it’s pretty California in its taste and style, with quasi thin crust and ingredients like zucchinis, lemon zest or Bulgarian feta atop the pizzas.
And speaking of Bulgarian feta, Cheeseboard certainly does like their feta. The ‘Board -- open Tuesday- Saturday -- only offers one kind of pizza a day. Which means that if you also find that feta overpowers the rest of the pizza, then you need to plan carefully which day you go. This past week four out of the five pizzas had feta.
Let it be known, we have nothing against feta, goats or Bulgaria for that matter. But when it comes to The Cheeseboard…well, sometimes we’re just a little cheese-bored. (Oh how we make ourselves chuckle.)
But all and all- Cheeseboard is good stuff.
By Jessie, contributing
Second stop- Zachary’s: This is another one of those East Bay places people kept telling us about. But unlike Cheeseboard, we’re not really sure why. Zachary’s pizza, in Rockridge and Albany, is known for its deep-dish Chicago-style pizza (although they do have a thin crust pizza too).
Now perhaps we are biased. After all, we are at heart thin-crusters, so maybe the whole deep-dish thing isn’t for us. But on repeat trips to Zachary’s, we decided, no. We just don’t like it.
For one thing, the tomato sauce is chunky and kind of tangy in flavor. Chunky tomato sauce on a pizza? Also, the pizza crust is usually burnt, and the dough is a little too much like a flaky piecrust for our liking.
All told, the lines at Zachary’s baffle us. Is this truly authentic Chicago pizza? Windy City, what’s the deal with your sauce?
Last stop: Our final stop of Pizza d’ East Bay is at our favorite. The best. Probably the best east-coast pizza in all of the Bay Area. Yes that’s a bold statement, but once you too have been to Gioia’s in North Berkeley, you will believe.
We love Arinell (although there’s an Arinell in the city and Berkeley, so we really can’t include it in the round-up). But Gioia is on another plane entirely. Yes, admittedly a more expensive plane, but we can live with that. We won’t say too much more here because Gioia is like one of those movies you want everyone to see but you don’t want to say too much about and spoil it. So just go.
We had anchovies with hot chilies recently and have a whole new respect for the little anchovy now. This is east coast thin crust pizza at its best. Made with all the fresh Berkeley ingredients like Cheeseboard, but with a more subtle flair. Salty, thin tasty crust, greasy in a good way.
Yes, East Bay, you’ve done us well after all.