I'm so excited! Piccino has ice!
To be charitable, parking in the City sucks.
I had an errand to run in the FiDi so I thought I'd check out the oxymoronic "upscale barbeque" at the newly opened Wexler's. Tons of street parking available...if you're driving a commercial vehicle. Otherwise, nada, nada, zilch. Why this freakin' City needs to set aside so many metered spaces for commercial vehicles is beyond the comprehension of the rational mind. Trucks never use the freakin' spaces. They double parking. If our Board of Stupidvisors and our wannabe governor Mayor insist on balancing Muni's budget by increasing parking ticket revenue (a mind-blowingly bad idea in and of itself — let's pay for public transit by increasing fines for people who don't use it), they should start by getting the DPT golf-cart drivers to ticket double-parked trucks. They'd make a mint. I've yet to see it happen, not even once in the nine years I've lived in San Francisco.
But, I had a backup plan — a sandwich at the newly opened Oralia's in the Dogpatch. I fought my way through the crowd gathering for an afternoon Giant's game and arrived in the vicinity of 3rd and 20th (out of towners, that's 3rd Street and 20th Street — San Francisco bizarrely has numbered streets that intersect numbered streets, not avenues; avenues are in an entirely different part of the City) to find...no parking. There aren't a ton of spaces near the place and the ones extant were all occupied. Part of the problem is a quirk in the joint's location, an area with limited street parking because many neighboring businesses have driveways. And, surprise, surprise, part of the problem is that the City has declared miles of perfectly good curbfront to be no parking zones for no apparent reason other than to spite those who dare convey themselves via automobile. Seriously, the crackheads who wander around U.N. Plaza get more consideration from the City than drivers.
After circling for a bit (increasing my carbon footprint, oh thou wise City planners), I found a quasi-legal space (i.e., a space that probably wasn't really legal but was so badly marked that I probably could successfully fight a ticket) at 20th and some street named after a state. It was about a four block walk to Oralia's so I could have hoofed it but Piccino lay between my intended destination and me. Being a Lazy Glutton, in addition to a Grumpy one, I opted for pizza over a sammie.
I grabbed a menu and sat down. Waitress came over and asked me what I wanted to drink. I asked her what they had. First words out of her mouth, "Iced tea." Iced freakin' tea!!! I just about fell out of my chair. I was so stunned that I didn't even check to see if the waitress was cute! (I later determined that she was.) To understand my astonishment, read my Piccino review from last year. I hadn't gone back since that visit in large part because I could not procure my beverage of choice.
The crisp, simple salad ($8.00) was crisp and simple. The mustard vinaigrette could have been tossed more evenly across the lettuce but that's a nit. The salad was good. Given the price and (generous) portion, it's a better salad to share than to eat solo.
As I did last year, I ordered the pepperone (their spelling) pizza ($11.00, up from $10.00 last year). The pizza, specifically, the crust, was a definite improvement over what I ate last year. Then, I complained that the crust was limp in the middle. Now, simply awesome crust — firm the whole way to the center of the pie, thinish but not a cracker crust, very crisp on the bottom, a pleasantly chewy layer above what touched the oven. Enough pepperone on the current pie. Still oversauced and undercheesed. About 1/3 less sauce and 1/3 more cheese would approach perfection, IMNSHO.
Iced tea ($2.75) was good but not spectacular. No big thing — I was thrilled to simply have iced tea.
At almost $28 including tax and tip, it felt pricey for a salad and pizza lunch. Part of this was the salad, which, as previously mentioned, could easily have been split had I not been dining alone. I didn't necessarily feel that the 'za was overpriced but I do get a bit annoyed at the 10% price increase when it was just announced that the CPI fell by 1.3% year over year. Do you understand recession peeps?
The key thing that's happened to Piccino in the past year (actually, about six months ago, per the man behind the counter) is that they opened a coffee shop about halfway down the block. This resulted in two significant improvements at the restaurant: 1) the coffee shop installed an ice machine so the restaurant schleps ice from it for their drinks and 2) it allowed the restaurant to rip out its espresso bar, more than doubling it's indoor seating. While I highly recommend sitting outside on nice days, the limited indoor capacity really limited them during bad weather.
With summer rolling in (finally), making outdoor seating attractive again, and iced tea available, Piccino will be a more frequent destination for me.
I had an errand to run in the FiDi so I thought I'd check out the oxymoronic "upscale barbeque" at the newly opened Wexler's. Tons of street parking available...if you're driving a commercial vehicle. Otherwise, nada, nada, zilch. Why this freakin' City needs to set aside so many metered spaces for commercial vehicles is beyond the comprehension of the rational mind. Trucks never use the freakin' spaces. They double parking. If our Board of Stupidvisors and our wannabe governor Mayor insist on balancing Muni's budget by increasing parking ticket revenue (a mind-blowingly bad idea in and of itself — let's pay for public transit by increasing fines for people who don't use it), they should start by getting the DPT golf-cart drivers to ticket double-parked trucks. They'd make a mint. I've yet to see it happen, not even once in the nine years I've lived in San Francisco.
But, I had a backup plan — a sandwich at the newly opened Oralia's in the Dogpatch. I fought my way through the crowd gathering for an afternoon Giant's game and arrived in the vicinity of 3rd and 20th (out of towners, that's 3rd Street and 20th Street — San Francisco bizarrely has numbered streets that intersect numbered streets, not avenues; avenues are in an entirely different part of the City) to find...no parking. There aren't a ton of spaces near the place and the ones extant were all occupied. Part of the problem is a quirk in the joint's location, an area with limited street parking because many neighboring businesses have driveways. And, surprise, surprise, part of the problem is that the City has declared miles of perfectly good curbfront to be no parking zones for no apparent reason other than to spite those who dare convey themselves via automobile. Seriously, the crackheads who wander around U.N. Plaza get more consideration from the City than drivers.
After circling for a bit (increasing my carbon footprint, oh thou wise City planners), I found a quasi-legal space (i.e., a space that probably wasn't really legal but was so badly marked that I probably could successfully fight a ticket) at 20th and some street named after a state. It was about a four block walk to Oralia's so I could have hoofed it but Piccino lay between my intended destination and me. Being a Lazy Glutton, in addition to a Grumpy one, I opted for pizza over a sammie.
I grabbed a menu and sat down. Waitress came over and asked me what I wanted to drink. I asked her what they had. First words out of her mouth, "Iced tea." Iced freakin' tea!!! I just about fell out of my chair. I was so stunned that I didn't even check to see if the waitress was cute! (I later determined that she was.) To understand my astonishment, read my Piccino review from last year. I hadn't gone back since that visit in large part because I could not procure my beverage of choice.
The crisp, simple salad ($8.00) was crisp and simple. The mustard vinaigrette could have been tossed more evenly across the lettuce but that's a nit. The salad was good. Given the price and (generous) portion, it's a better salad to share than to eat solo.
As I did last year, I ordered the pepperone (their spelling) pizza ($11.00, up from $10.00 last year). The pizza, specifically, the crust, was a definite improvement over what I ate last year. Then, I complained that the crust was limp in the middle. Now, simply awesome crust — firm the whole way to the center of the pie, thinish but not a cracker crust, very crisp on the bottom, a pleasantly chewy layer above what touched the oven. Enough pepperone on the current pie. Still oversauced and undercheesed. About 1/3 less sauce and 1/3 more cheese would approach perfection, IMNSHO.
Iced tea ($2.75) was good but not spectacular. No big thing — I was thrilled to simply have iced tea.
At almost $28 including tax and tip, it felt pricey for a salad and pizza lunch. Part of this was the salad, which, as previously mentioned, could easily have been split had I not been dining alone. I didn't necessarily feel that the 'za was overpriced but I do get a bit annoyed at the 10% price increase when it was just announced that the CPI fell by 1.3% year over year. Do you understand recession peeps?
The key thing that's happened to Piccino in the past year (actually, about six months ago, per the man behind the counter) is that they opened a coffee shop about halfway down the block. This resulted in two significant improvements at the restaurant: 1) the coffee shop installed an ice machine so the restaurant schleps ice from it for their drinks and 2) it allowed the restaurant to rip out its espresso bar, more than doubling it's indoor seating. While I highly recommend sitting outside on nice days, the limited indoor capacity really limited them during bad weather.
With summer rolling in (finally), making outdoor seating attractive again, and iced tea available, Piccino will be a more frequent destination for me.
Piccino
801 22nd Street
at Tennessee Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Map
Web site
Food inspection score: 2_LOCATIONID:32597" target=_blank>98
Symbol of Excellence: Yes
Posted by Grumpy at 6/17/2009 1:42 PM 
Categories: Dogpatch, Iced Tea, Outdoor Seating, Pizza, Fun Date-Friendly
Categories: Dogpatch, Iced Tea, Outdoor Seating, Pizza, Fun Date-Friendly
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