VinDivine

PRO: Authentic Naples feel, nice space, very nice people.
CON: Maybe an ‘off night’, but it took forever to get our order,  the pies were way too doughy and the sauce was lacking taste.

We hit this place last night, thought we’d give it, oh, 5 nights of being open to work out the kinks! Hey people, it’s pizza and you know how we feel about the almighty PIE. And I had my sights set high about this place, as they have a fair amount of hype around their Napoli-style ‘za. Bring it, Pulcinella! Can you hang in this ‘hood?

So first, right when we walked in we were greeted by everyone working there. Super gracious, nice cool people for sure. They did a great job of explaining the menu (not that it was complicated) but still, that’s nice of ‘em. They’re painting a pretty involved mural on the back wall, and they had me meet the artist who was working on it at the time. It’s a painting of..come on, guess! I’m waiting…OK, it’s a mural of Napoli with Pulcinella (who is a kind of, sort of god, but playing the ‘comic servant’) gazing over it. Whatever the hell that just meant. Anyhoo, it’ll be a cool looking piece of art when it’s done.

Pulcinella is fairly small, an 8-10 person bar with maybe another 15-16 tables for 2. This place is pretty authentic like a lot of places you would actually go to in Naples or Sorrento, from the music to the tumbled stone floor and little arches between the bar and main dining area. They also shine old Italian movies (no volume) up on the wall. Not trying too hard, just trying to be real, feel me? The owner’s mom even lives in Capri (about a 30 minute boat from Naples) so they know their stuff.

OK, enough HGTV. Let’s get down to bizness. Although they offer pasta and other dishes (like Pasta Vongole, Filet Crudo and Burrata e Proscuitto, which all sounded tasty) we were there for the Napoli-style pizza. So we ordered the Quattro Stagione and the Pulcinella.

So we sat back and ordered a couple glasses of vino while we waited for our pies. Note, they only have one red and one white wine by the glass, they need to fix that. So we drank those. Then we ordered two more. Actually I switched to Peroni. Still no pies. And the place was not crowded when we ordered. Then we saw a table that came in way after us get a table-full of pizzas. No, they didn’t call it in beforehand, you skeptic! Then our dude came over, apologized about the oven not being hot enough (?), and said he’d get the order going and comp us an appy. OK, whatever, cool.

Then we finished round 2 of drinks. After about 15 more minutes the appy appeared – it was the Fritto Misto: a Fried Pumpkin Blossom, Potato Croquette, and a breaded and deep fried spaghetti and ham ‘ball’ (can’t remember what he called it). All pretty good, especially the pumpkin (nice texture and crisp), and the spaghetti & ham ball. Tip: this dish definitely could have used a side of Marinara sauce to liven it up.

We inhaled that in no time, then our dude came back and told us then that he’d fire up our pizzas. Aye aye aye. How did he know we had absolutely nowhere to be?! Lucky. So we order a couple more rounds and…wait. But finally not too very long, about 15 more minutes and the two pies came out. Halle-f’ing-luyah! I mean, Janine had just started to clamp her teeth on my forearm. All in all from the time we ordered to when we got the pies? 1:10…just sayin’.

The Stagione Quattro (pictured here) looked pretty good at first glance (and not just ‘cuz we were starving). I mean, look. It’s a very attractive pie. Very photogenic. 1/4 each with (clockwise from 12:00) ham, mozzarella, olives, and sausage. Bubbled burnt crust, nice colors, etc. It did look way to thick around the edges though. So that’s the visual.

The bite: Man. I hate to be a bitch especially with a new place. The cool thing about this pie is it’s like 4 minis, which will all be unique. Well, the dollops of mozzy were very small. I mean, way too small. The crust, even at it’s thinnest, was still about 1/8″ thick, and got thicker from there. Not crisp, as it should be. And the sauce did not have much flavor. Seemed almost watered down, like the tomatoes weren’t drained well enough. Plus the crust around the edge, at least 3/4″ around was just a waste to us, we just left a ginormous pile of it. That said, the actual sausage and ham tasted good. Next, the Pulcinella, which is Cherry Tomatoes, Sauce and Buffala Mozzarella (we added shrooms) suffered from the same stuff I just kibitzed about above. Ditto. Hey and before you haters get all over us, we shared our pies with 3 other people who echoed our opinions. So take that!

Bottom line we want to like this place but if that’s their take on kick-ass Napoli pizza we’ll stick with Tony’s or Aurora Pizzeria in Capri. And even though the pies took way too long to come out, the fact they were so nice and friendly gets them points. Maybe we’ll try again sometime soon.

VdV Rating: 2.5

Hours:
Sun-Sat 5:30p-10:30p

Pulcinella Pizza & Italian Ristorante
641 Vallejo (betw. Columbus & Stockton)
San Francisco
(415) 829-7312
no website yet

PIZZA!