Every time I see the name Alan Richman, all I can think of is, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf%#$er." What's that? Bruce Willis spoke that line to Alan Rickman??? Richman, Rickman, whatever!

Anyway, Richman, the food writer, not Rickman, the actor, just wrote about the 25 best pizzas in America for GQ. San Francisco nabbed three of the top 25 slots. The hometown heroes are Pizzeria Delfina at #3, Gialina at #14 and A16 at #17.

First and foremost, I wholeheartedly agree with Richman when he says:

Italians are wrong...[a]bout pizza. Pizza was created by the Italians...but...[r]ight now it justly belongs to us. We care more about it. We eat more of it.... Italians don’t really understand pizza. ... Pizza isn’t as fundamental to Italy as it is to America. Over there, it plays a secondary role to pasta, risotto, and polenta. To be candid, I think they could do without it. Not us. Over here, it’s one of the few foreign foods we’ve embraced wholeheartedly, made entirely our own.

I've eaten pizza in Italy. Compared to the good stuff in America, Italian pizza is a mere shell of what it could and should be.

Pleased as I am that the Bay Area contributed more than 10% of the names on Richman's list, I have a quibble (of course I have a quibble, I'm grumpy). I believe that Gialina is better than Pizzeria Delfina. PD is great, no question, but the Atomica add pepperoni at Gialina is pure pie perfection. 

I'm on record as not being an A16 fan but I don't remember trying their pizza so I'll withhold comment.

Finally, based on several trips to the newly opened Pizza Nostra, I think that it's going to have to be considered as a San Francisco possibility for lists such as this in the future.

Yippee-ki-yay, San Francisco pizza eaters!!!