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Pizzeria Delfina
Pizzeria Delfina opened in 2005, when Craig and Annie Stoll annexed the storefront next door to their already-acclaimed, James Beard Award-winning restaurant Delfina to open a more casual, pizza-focused sister concept. The idea was straightforward: bring genuinely Neapolitan-inspired pizza, drawing on both Naples and New York influences, to a Mission District that hadn't had a serious pizza specialist of that caliber before. The pizza itself runs on a thin, well-blistered crust built to carry real developed flavor rather than just function as a base for toppings, made by a kitchen that already had a proven fine-dining pedigree behind it before it ever turned its attention to pizza specifically. That pedigree is part of what set Pizzeria Delfina apart from typical neighborhood pizzerias when it opened — this was a James Beard-honored chef's restaurant applying serious technique to a more casual, accessible format. From that original 600-square-foot Mission storefront, Pizzeria Delfina expanded to additional Bay Area locations in Pacific Heights, Burlingame, and Palo Alto, extending the same thin-crust, Neapolitan-inspired approach well beyond its original neighborhood. The Mission original has more recently shifted to a takeout-and-delivery-only format, a notable change for the location that started the whole concept, even as full-service dining continues at its sister locations. That evolution — from a single annexed storefront next to an already-celebrated restaurant into a genuine multi-location Bay Area pizza group — reflects how much demand there was for a chef-driven, technically serious pizza option in a city that, at the time, had relatively few of them. For a San Francisco pizza list, Pizzeria Delfina is the essential "fine-dining chef's pizza" entry — a thin, Neapolitan-inspired crust from a kitchen that built its reputation on a James Beard Award before it ever opened a pizza oven.
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Golden Boy Pizza
Golden Boy Pizza opened on Green Street in North Beach in 1978, founded by Peter Sodini around a style genuinely distinctive to San Francisco: thick, focaccia-style squares topped and baked more like a Sicilian pan pizza than a conventional thin round pie. The format caught on fast — Golden Boy became, in short order, "the place to be" in North Beach, eventually expanding to as many as seven locations across San Francisco and Berkeley along with a wholesale business supplying delis and schools. The pizza itself is built on a thick, chewy, olive-oil-brushed crust with a genuinely bready structure under the sauce and cheese — a meaningfully different eating experience from the thin, foldable slices most San Francisco pizzerias serve, closer to a proper focaccia than to a typical New York or Neapolitan pie. It's sold by the thick square slice, cash-friendly and fast, built for late-night North Beach foot traffic as much as for a sit-down meal. Sodini eventually scaled the business back from its multi-location peak, but he kept the original Green Street flagship running, and it's since passed to his sons, who've kept the format essentially unchanged while recently expanding again with a new Sunset District location — evidence the format still has real demand outside its original North Beach neighborhood. Close to fifty years in the same Green Street storefront, run across two generations of the same family, serving a thick focaccia-style square that's stayed genuinely distinct from the thin-crust and Neapolitan pizza dominating much of the rest of San Francisco's scene, makes Golden Boy a real North Beach institution rather than just a late-night novelty. For a San Francisco pizza list, Golden Boy Pizza is the essential "thick, focaccia-style square" entry — a dive-y, cash-fast North Beach counter that's been serving the same distinctive format since 1978.
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