Sitting in one of the inside window seats at Flour + Water, we watched the Vespr lobby’s giant mobile shimmer in the sunlight. Directly in front of us on the ground level, we could see what the diners on the patio outside had ordered. In turn, three women passing by on the street were so entranced by the sight of our pizzas they decided to come inside to snoop around.
One of them broke away from her trio of gal pals to take a closer look at our pesto and burrata pizza pies. She told us she’d been to the San Francisco location of Flour + Water but hadn’t known about the Oakland opening. We encouraged her to come back to try the food. Meanwhile the hungry couple sitting next to us kept glancing over, covetously, at our chicken wings and a plate of white beans and celery.
The 24th Street iteration of Flour + Water’s first East Bay restaurant is more casual than the original one in the city. The new space nods to the idea of the coolest school cafeteria, one that’s been designed for a savvy, business-lunch crowd. Diners order at the counter then wait for the dishes to arrive as the smell of blistering pizza dough permeates the room. The long row of high windows suffuses the dining room with light. That sense of openness must be behind the communal call and response we experienced.
The restaurant already feels like it’s enlivening the neighborhood. Tarts de Feybesse is right across the way. Throughout lunch, pedestrians passed us and the bakery’s patrons who were leisurely indulging in éclairs and entremets. That corner of 24th Street provides a quiet thruway linking Whole Foods to downtown.
The Flour + Water group of restaurants is run by two co-chefs, Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow. When I had lunch there, Pollnow was aproned up on site and cooking in the kitchen. “Anytime you go through an opening everything’s new to everyone,” he said. During the first couple of months the team is paying “aggressive attention” to the details. “There are chefs working below Tom and I who we trust dearly. And our kitchen manager here, Felipe Cruz, will be overseeing this location 100% of his time.”
Once operations are settled, Pollnow will pull back and return to the flagship Flour + Water and Penny Roma. McNaughton, he said, has begun to take on more of a CEO role overseeing the strategic growth of the pizza shops. Right now there are three pizza shop locations, two in San Francisco and this latest one in Oakland.
The East Bay opening happened, in part, after Flour + Water launched a frozen pizza line that sold well at the nearby Whole Foods. To this day, Pollnow noted, it’s still the No. 1 store for frozen pizza sales. “That gave us a bit of confidence, even though it’s a scary move to go outside of San Francisco with the Flour + Water brand,” he said. To create the Oakland menu, the team found inspiration in a couple of beloved and well-established East Bay brands.
The Cheese Board serves a green sauce with its celebrated pizzas. “In my opinion, the green sauce is a known thing in the pizza world,” Pollnow said. “I’ve seen other pizzerias serving it as a side dip for crust, and I love it.” A couple of years ago, some Flour + Water managers went on an East Bay pizza crawl. “It was the first time as a group that we all sat around and obsessed over how delicious the green sauce is.”
When they developed the recipe for the chicken wings, the team also believed it was a perfect dip for pizza crust and the wings. “I’ve been shopping at the Oaktown Spice Shop since I can remember. They’re super close, right on the lake,” Pollnow said. The chefs went through the process of sampling their products and landed on the “Grand Lake Shake,” the seasoning for the wings. “With the pizza shops going into different locations,” he added, “we always want to be mindful of where we are and to pay homage to that place.”
Flour + Water, open 11:30am to 10pm, Mon–Sat (until 9pm on Sun).271 24th St., Oakland. fwpizzashop.com