Pleasant House

Chelsea and I spent a couple of exciting and formative years in San Francisco around the turn of the century. I was still growing up and working in restaurants, and Chelsea was working chef’s hours times two at a music magazine startup.

Back then we spent a fair amount of time eating and drinking around San Francisco, the Bay Area, and the wine country. Our neighborhood, the Mission, was very much like the neighborhood we live in now, Pilsen, in Chicago. One thing the Mission was building up at that time that Pilsen doesn’t have yet–yet! (Nightwood is a fine start) was a gourmet dining corridor. One restaurant that anchored this corridor and that had us at ribollita was Delfina.

delfinasf.com

A coworker and friend from the Bay Area, Chris, took me to Delfina for the first time. It was really cool because he was so excited about the place and already knew what he was going to order for us: ribollita, wood-grilled Monterrey squid over rice beans, whipped brandade, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, grilled flatiron with rosemary-threaded frites. The meal couldn’t have been any simpler and any more delicious. Wine service was just as inspired and just as fresh in its delivery and selection. I loved the food, the wine, the company, and what I would realize the restaurant stood for–a Northern Californian approach to Italian food. Specifically, it meant that a meal at Delfina would consist of the best, locally sourced ingredients from small farms and its preparation would be inspired by the seasons and by Chef/Owner Craig Stoll’s experience at his restaurant’s namesake, Da Delfina, in Artimino, Italy. Market-driven restaurant philosophy is quite the buzz today in Chicago, and restaurants like Delfina were most likely an inspiration for some of them.

Chef Stoll: photo credits delfinasf.com

After my initial introduction, Chelsea and I went to Delfina, again and again, and after we moved back to Chicago and visited San Francisco, we returned again and again. Then we added the new Pizzeria Delfina to the ticket and went back again and again.

After a little peek into the back story of the restaurant, I learned that the chef, Craig Stoll, had apprenticed in the little town of Artimino, outside the big city of Florence, at a restaurant called Da Delfina–the eventual inspiration for his restaurant, Delfina. When it first opened, Delfina SF was quite a bit smaller than the one I have known. It had only a few tables and a limited menu. Spaghetti with a sauce of plum tomatoes, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and peperoncini priced at $9 or $13 was a signature item on that menu then, and is still there today, even though the restaurant has added more seats and to the menu, more items. The Stolls’ mission in the Mission was a good one: to feed their friends in the neighborhood. The people embraced it, and they expanded to become one of the most popular restaurants in the city.

Chelsea and I loved Delfina so much that we, too, wanted to go “straight to the source,” so to speak, and Da Delfina became the Holy Grail of our eventual, first Italian vacation. And what a vacation and education it was. So thanks, Chris, for the introduction. And thanks, Delfina, for showing me what California Italian and following your dreams is all about–and for inspiring me to travel to Italy to be yelled at by Carlo for showing up a half-hour early for our reservation in Artimino, where we had one of the best meals of our lives. Happy 11 years.

Da Delfina menu