Ragazza

Happy Valentine's Day! Today is one of my favorite holidays. No, not because I enjoy getting chocolates, flowers and treated to dinner. I love today because tomorrow all the Valentine's Day candy is HALF OFF. I'm a sucker for sweets and even a bigger fool for buying discounted commercial holiday candy. I can't wait!

To continue my post about love, let me tell you about how much I loved my dinner at Ragazza last night. I loved the friendly, patient and very attentive service. I loved the reasonably priced Italian wine list that gave you the option to order by glass, carafe or bottle. I loved their willingness to make any pizza vegetarian for my non meat eating friend. And lastly, I loved the food!

My friend and I ordered housemade foccacia that only cost $1! Simply served with oil and balsamic vinegar. Oh carbs, how I love thee.

We shared a Castelfranco Radicchio and arugula salad with blood oranges, farro, gorgonzola and hazelnuts. Loved the option for a small or large salad. The only issue I had with this dish was that the arugula was long and stringy and difficult to cut. Not a dish to order on a date since you will most definitely be shoveling pieces of lettuce into your mouth in an unattractive manner.

Then we each ordered our own pizzas. Why share, when you can have your own?

 This is the Amatriciana with tomato, Boccalone pancetta, chilies, pecorino, oregano and an egg. The pizza was thin, crispy and deliciously salty from the pancetta. I pretty much ate this entire thing. It was love at first bite. I was also happy I could finally check another item off the 7x7 Big Eat 2012.

My lovely date ordered the brussels sprouts, sans applewood smoked bacon, thyme, red onion, and smoked mozzarella pizza. And added chiles and egg because any pizza tastes better with an egg.

To top it off, we also tried the Meyer lemon panna cotta. Amazing end to an amazing meal.

Go. there. now.

Ragazza

Local Restaurant and Wine Merchant

I'm alive! Took a brief sabbatical while the internet was out at my house. I also started a new gig that requires me to commute to SF everyday and has tied up a lot of my time. But thanks to T-mobile Hotspot, I'm back online! I realized how seriously addicted I am to the the world wide web when I had to do without for a week. With Thanksgiving around the corner, I'd like to express my utter gratitude for having internet! It's awesome. Best invention since bagel bites. Enough with the jabber, time for lovely pictures of FOOD.

Yesterday night I had planned to have dinner at Ragazza, one of Tablehopper's top 10 places to eat at now, but somewhere, someone didn't want me to eat there and produced a nasty drizzle all night long that made it difficult to hail a cab. Also, if I haven't expressed it yet, I hate the cab situation in SF. Why are there not just more?? I feel like four years ago, there were plenty of cabs and when you called for one, it came! Now, if I'm lucky, I may get one after 10 minutes of arm flailing in the streets. So, dear city of SF, please produce more cabs. Thanks. Instead of going to my planned dinner, I went to a local (teehee) cute place, called Local. If you haven't been here yet, go! You may recognize the chef by his signature red neckerchief, Mattin Noblia who was on Top Chef Season 6. The restaurant is designed beautifully. Wide open spaces, enormous marble counter seating that looks right into the open kitchen, long communal tables, intimate lighting, a cozy bar in the back corner....it just feels like you're in an amazing loft apartment rather than a restaurant. Service is spot on and most importantly, the food is wonderful.

 This was a yummy local salad with radicchio, arugula, frisee, endive, pancetta, candied walnuts, balsalmic vinaigrette and Grand Padano.

 They were so nice as to split the salad into two since I mentioned we were sharing. I love when restaurants do that! The drinks are Portrero Hills and is made with gin, st. germain elderflower and something cucumber-y. It was very refreshing.

 I sat right at the kitchen counter, in front of the wood burning oven--it felt like a nice cozy fireplace. I also got to watch the kitchen prepare my delicious salsiccia pizza. It has house-made fennel sausage, fresh mozzarella, scallions, Calabrrian chilies and Stonehouse olive oil. It was so good.

This was a side order of pea shoots. It has pickled onions and almonds and something that made it spicy. It was good, but I prefer the Asian way of preparing these--simple garlic and oil.

So I didn't make it to Ragazza, but Local was a great substitute. I didn't mention a lot of other really fabulous things they have on the menu--happy hour fried chicken, herb fries, spaghetti and meatballs. Yum. Definitely on my list of dependable and consistently good food!