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Little Star Pizza
Little Star Pizza built its reputation in San Francisco on a style the city otherwise has little of: proper Chicago-style deep-dish, with a thick, cornmeal-flecked crust holding up a hefty layer of cheese and chunky tomato sauce spooned over the top rather than tucked underneath. In a pizza scene dominated by thin crusts and Neapolitan-leaning kitchens, Little Star carved out a specific, durable niche as one of the only places locals reliably point to for genuine deep-dish. The build follows deep-dish convention closely — a pan-baked, high-edged crust, a generous cheese layer, and the reverse-order sauce placement that separates true deep-dish from a merely thick pizza — served as a substantial, fork-and-knife order rather than a quick handheld slice. That commitment to getting the format right, rather than offering deep-dish as a novelty option on a broader thin-crust menu, is what's kept the concept credible with people who've actually had the real thing in Chicago. The company has since grown into a small regional group operating under both the Little Star and The Star Pizza names, with locations spread across the Bay Area and into Portland, Oregon, while keeping the San Francisco outpost on Valencia Street as one of its most established addresses. That expansion, built entirely on a style genuinely uncommon to Northern California, speaks to how well the format has traveled beyond its Chicago origins. For a city with no shortage of thin-crust specialists, having a kitchen fully committed to the opposite extreme gives San Francisco's pizza scene real range rather than just variations on the same thin, blistered format. For a San Francisco pizza list, Little Star Pizza is the essential "the deep-dish outlier" entry — a thick, cornmeal-crusted, reverse-layered pie that's stayed the city's most reliable answer to genuine Chicago-style pizza.
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Arinell Pizza
Arinell Pizza's San Francisco location on Valencia Street operates as a sister shop to the original Arinell, which Ron Demirdjian opened in Berkeley in 1975 after training under an Italian pizza-maker in upper Manhattan and concluding that nobody in the Bay Area was making real New York-style pizza. The Mission District location has carried that same format and reputation across the bay, becoming, in its own right, one of San Francisco's most reliably cited cult-favorite pizza-by-the-slice spots. The pizza itself is unapologetically New York in style — large, thin, foldable slices sold fast and cheap, cooked with minimal fuss and served without much in the way of decor or ceremony. It's the kind of counter that trades entirely on the quality of the slice rather than atmosphere, a genuine dive in the best sense: bare-bones, inexpensive, and built for speed rather than a sit-down experience. That format has made Arinell a specific late-night and post-bar staple in the Mission, the kind of place regulars duck into for a quick, reliable slice rather than plan a meal around. Nearly fifty years after the Berkeley original opened on the belief that authentic New York pizza simply didn't exist yet in the Bay Area, the Mission location has helped prove that belief right by building its own loyal following on the same basic conviction. The shop's continued commitment to a classic, unfussy New York slice — no gourmet toppings, no elevated presentation, just a well-made thin crust sold fast — has let it hold its own against flashier, more expensive competitors for decades. For a San Francisco pizza list, Arinell Pizza is the essential "no-frills New York slice" entry — a thin, foldable, cheaply priced pie from a dive counter that's been proving Demirdjian's original thesis right since the 1970s.
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