Pizzeria Delfina - Mission — Restaurant in San Francisco

I had a nice evening meal at Delfina.

I came here for an 8:00 reservation on a Wednesday night. We were seated immediately and the ambience was warm and cozy. Our waitress suggested we start with something bubbly and recommended a lambrusco for us. It was pink in color but not overly sweet and provided a nice freshness for the start of our meal.

Our waitress helped us determine how many things to order and opened the bottle of wine we had brought in. Throughout the meal she provided excellent service and she's a large reason why I'm giving Delfina 4 stars instead of 3.

Overall, the food was kind of hit or miss. We shared:

Tartine Bread - served with house-cultured butter. The bread was fluffy and served as a huge portion, perfect for dipping with various dishes as the evening went on. It would have been nice if it had been served warm, however. The butter was super fresh and creamy and had a nice sprinkling of salt on top.

Heirloom Tomatoes - with pane strappato, stracciatella, gaeta olive, anchovy. Our waitress kindly warned us that the olives had pits before we dove in, which I thought was unnecessary but very nice of her. The tomatoes were juicy, sweet, and fresh, perfectly summer-time ripe. The cheese was creamy and paired nicely with the acidity from the tomatoes and the crunch from the croutons. My date, who doesn't really like tomatoes, loved this dish. The whole thing was well seasoned, the olive oil was high quality and very tasty, though I missed the anchovy flavor that was described on the menu.

Papparedelle - with lamb sugo, black-eyed peas, gypsy peppers. This is where things went a little down hill for me. The pappardelle itself was delicious, perfectly al dente, though MUCH thicker than any pappardelle I've seen before. It was huge. The sauce was also really tasty, nice and hearty, and I liked the texture added from the black eyed peas. The lamb was a bit stringy though, as if it was perhaps overcooked, and while I liked each ingredient on the plate, they seemed to be too separate from one another as opposed to one cohesive dish.

Pancetta-Wrapped Rabbit Saddle - served with smoked eggplant and Jimmy Nardello peppers. This dish sounded so often but just didn't deliver. The meat was a bit rare and mushy on the inside. The pancetta wrapping was nicely salty but not crispy enough for my taste. The peppers were nicely crisped and charred, and the eggplant was delicious and well cooked, but I just wasn't satisfied with the rabbit itself.

Overall, this was a great meal in terms of general experience. The service was great, most of the food was good, and the company was fantastic. There are definitely things on the menu I'd love to try if I came back, but given the hit-or-miss quality, I likely won't be...

Nice ambience, solid friendly service. I'd come here again. Good for a date night. Extensive wine list, would order the margarita pie next time.

Skip the castelvetrano olives, nothing special. Chicken liver crostini was solid, good ratio of liver to toast, and the little radish and olive on the plate was nice. You do taste the liver though, don't get me wrong.

Gnocchi with nettle pesto was very good, nice texture on the gnocchi, not too firm or bouncy. Pesto and fonduta were rich, the chanterelles adds needed textural and flavor contrast. Pizza with fungi was solid but I'd recommend the margherita next time for more contrast with the acid of the tomatoes. The crust is really good here, nice chew, solid base with a little droop. The fungi pizza was just a little one note with the richness from the cheese and a little savoriness from the mushrooms, missing some acid for freshness for balance.

Market price on the 1lbs roasted snapper (other option was sea bream) was $42. Nice firm flesh and they remove the central bone in advance. The preserved Meyer lemon on the side was only ok, the parsley sauce was better, the grilled scallions quite good. We picked the cabbage with bagna cauda for our side - great execution/char on the cabbage, the sauce was savory without tasting fishy at all with some crouton/crispy breadcrumbs for contrast. Highly recommend the cabbage.

Buttermilk panna cotta nailed the texture but my table mates commented that it just felt like Greek yogurt given the tang and that's fair. It's hard to get the passion fruit on the spoon so it's a bit of a waste. For the brown butter gelato and blood orange sorbet to, the gelato was better imo, more depth of flavor, quite dense, but it overall tasted more milky like a fior di latte with just a touch of nutty brown butter at the end. I wonder if they add more milk solids to the butter to bump that up. Blood orange could have been more orange-y, get some oil extraction of the peels...

This is the flagship Pizzeria Delfina (vs Filmore outpost location). We were there at 2pm on Sunday afternoon and waited 20-min outside after putting name down on chalkboard inside the door. You could order a margarita pizza with pepperoni toppings (as my kid did). We also enjoyed fritters spring onions there were a day’s offering. Wait staff were kindly offering a bundled breadsticks to kids in line outside perhaps acknowledging hungry kids won’t be so happy. Great service and very casual laidback setting. One of the staffs quickly realized that our kids gobbled up all breadsticks waiting our pizzas and brought more quickly twice. A small numbers of sitting inside and outside for about 28 to 34 seats. There are about 4-5 seats at the bar if you don’t want to wait to get a table. I think Delfina, the bigger restaurant next to wasn’t open for lunch but will accommodate a bigger crowd during dinner time. I loved the pizzas here. It’s Neapolitan style pizzas with nice chars on crust and good bites/textures of pizza dough. I could even eat their crusts only if I were offered. I highly recommend this place if you’re near by for a great pizza. Personally really admired the mural inside the wall. I forgot to write down the name of the artist a waitstaff told me his name during our meal. And walking by Tartine Bakery (another world famous institution) around the corner, we learned that the line for that place was 30 to 40-min at 1:30pm on Sunday. Pizzeria Delfina was a great alternative place for lunch for our...