Eat Here Now is a first look at some of the newest, hottest restaurants around — the ones we think are worth visiting. We dine once, serve forth our thoughts, and let you take it from there.
Mortadella is having a moment.
Once regarded as barely a notch up the culinary ladder from Oscar Mayer baloney, the finely ground sausage — a mix of fatty meat from a pig’s throat and back, plus pistachios, myrtle, and black pepper — is now a prized cold cut at San Francisco restaurants. It’s a keystone of the New Orleans-style muffuletta that anchors the menu at Sandy’s in the Haight. At Russian Hill wine cafe Bar Bibi, it’s paired with burrata and pistachios on toast. Frankie’s in the Marina slathers it in stracciatella and cornichons. And Breadbelly, the bakery, uses “mortie” on its hangover-curing heirloom-tomato sandwich.
So it’s no surprise that mortadella shows up at Sforno (opens in new tab), a 3-month-old pizzeria in Hayes Valley. That neighborhood has no shortage of pizza, but owner Silvia Veronese is particularly dedicated to her craft. She brought her wood-fired oven from Naples, reassembling it stateside under the watchful eye of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the governing body whose regulations (opens in new tab) extend to the motion one’s hand must make when adding extra-virgin olive oil to a margherita pie (a spiral, if you’re curious). Sforno makes its $24 mortadella pizza with arugula, Parmesan, creamy burrata, and oven-friendly fior di latte mozzarella — and it’s one of the most popular offerings. So is the $15 panozzi, a double-baked, panini-like sandwich made out of pizza dough.
Appropriately, Sforno is Italian for “I bake.”
Folded in four, the portafoglio is a popular street snack, for only $9.
But the real superstar at Sforno — Italian for “I bake” — is the portafoglio, or “wallet.” A simple preparation made with San Marzano tomato sauce, basil, mozzarella, and Parmesan, it’s folded in four and served in waxed paper styled like newsprint, Sudoku and all. Thinner and smaller than a standard pizza, this wallet is decidedly wallet-friendly, too. “People are surprised that they can get a whole pizza for $9,” Veronese says of the quintessential Neapolitan street food.
The secret is the white-domed oven, fabricated brick by brick by 100-year old manufacturer Acunto Mario (opens in new tab), whose specialty lies in taking an old design and adding a complex system of tiers under the baking surface to ensure optimum heat transfer. Over a mix of oak and almond wood, pizzas bake at 800 to 900 degrees for 60 to 90 seconds.
“The oven is everything,” Veronese says. The only heat source in the shop, it dictates how quickly patrons are served as well as the time that Sforno opens for business. “It runs 24/7,” she says, emphasizing that they stop feeding it wood shortly before closing time. “But it takes a good hour and a half to get it to the right temperature.”
Sforno’s oven burns both oak and almond wood, reaching temperatures of 800 degrees.
Hayes Valley is full of pizzerias, but few can boast such commitment to the craft.
More than simply offering a menu that passes muster, Veronese, who also works in tech, wants to re-create the experience of eating in a Neapolitan pizzeria. The restaurant sources fresh produce from small purveyors in Napa and Sonoma, but the oregano comes from Calabria. The mozzarella is from Agerola, on the Amalfi Coast. And the dough starts with double-zero flour, milled to a texture nearly as fine as talcum powder, to obtain the proper elastic texture.
Sforno has room for only about six people to sit, but Veronese is working to build a parklet or get some outdoor seating. Unsurprisingly, she’s categorically opposed to pineapple on pizza but expresses an openness to experimenting with contemporary styles. The biggest hurdle may be the staff’s adherence to tradition, she says: “Everything has to go through me and a few other Italians.”
Consequently, in such a confined space, dominated by the massive oven, things can become a little animated. “Everybody you see in here is Italian or half-Italian,” Veronese says. “So sometimes, when you hear us scream or yell, it’s OK. We’re not fighting.”