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Visitors to San Francisco always tell me how much they enjoy seeing how lively North Beach is these days, and I often remind people to put it on their travel itineraries when they’re planning a trip here.
Since opening Tony’s Pizza Napoletana at 1570 Stockton Street in 2009, chef-owner Tony Gemignani deserves a lot of credit for keeping pride in the neighborhood. He has invested in it with this restaurant as well as three surrounding business: Capo’s, which is another pizza and pasta-focused restaurant; Toscano Brothers/Dago Bagels, a bakery featuring Italian breads; and Giovanni Italian Specialties, a store selling items such as fresh focaccia sandwiches, flours, condiments, and dough balls that you can pass off as your own at home.
A world champion for his creations as well as pizza acrobatics, Gemignani also had his own international pizza school upstairs for years. He has mentored countless pizzaiolos in both culinary and competitive athletic endeavors, and most recently gave billboard spotlights to local artists honoring North Beach.
Tony’s Pizza Napoletana has an extensive menu of pizza types, including coal-fired, Detroit-style, Grandma, and Sicilian, to name a few. I haven’t had one I didn’t love from any section, and I think Gemignani deserves even more flowers for the breadth and depth of his work, and for always keeping it playful.
I was recently invited to try five Napoletana and California style pizzas that have just been added to the menu. All are wood-fired at 900 degrees, and the California pizzas are made with Caputo blue pizza flour that’s blended with a house stone ground integrale multigrain flour.
One of the new Napoletana styles is apt for the moment because it’s called Upside Down Anchovy. The dough is fried on both sides before it’s topped with tomato sauce, Sorrentina provola cheese, white and brown anchovies, pesto, Calabrian oregano and chili thread. It’s served with a pair of sharp pizza scissors for customers to cut their own proportions.
Another very California newcomer is the Quail Eggs & Speck, which also comes topped with vodka tomato cream sauce with garlic and white onion, Sorrentina provola, mozzarella, Cypress Grove fromage blanc, micro arugula, Maldon salt, and cracked pepper, sort of a pinkies-up moment on the menu. And The Stinger has two kinds of hot oil, one sold commercially by Gemignani under the Tony G brand, tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, slices of sweet and spicy Italian sausage, agave garlic, green onion, ricotta, and chili thread.
I managed not to get stung, but my lunch companion definitely felt the flame of the Rosi Stinger pepper oil that he doused on the pizza in the name of me getting an action shot. (Sorry, buddy!)
Two of our favorites skew sweet and satisfy the craving for having some dessert vibes in the meal: I’m Your Huckleberry, a California pie that essentially comes off like a loaded baked blue potato, with crispy blues, huckleberry jam, green onion, mozzarella, sour cream, and huckleberry jam. We don’t get enough huckleberries in our Bay Area lives. There’s also the Napoletana style butternut squash with guanciale, which also has the Sorrentina provola cheese, mozzarella, sweet mascarpone, sorghum, and Maldon salt — it tastes like candy, and it’s wonderful.
Viva North Beach and Tony Gemignani, our San Francisco treasures. Keep growing, evolving, and experimenting!
Tamara Palmer offers the complimentary Food Book Club and California Eating newsletters.
