J and I often having a hard time deciding on somewhere to eat during the week. He tends to like something that is fast, "not drama", and somewhere that we know. I am usually a bit more adventurous -- I think it stems from the fact that he spends his day working at a mega-company with thousands of people, and I work at my teeny tiny studio apartment. We definitely have places we love to go -- noodle houses, sushi, random neighborhood joints -- but I think that we have both been kind of ready for some changes to our regular places. We finally found a new restaurant worthy of making it into the regular repertoire.
Our new food obsession lately is Pauline's Pizza in San Francisco. The other day we were sitting in the restaurant (for about the 5th time in three weeks) and Jason put his finger on it ... "This place is so San Francisco". It's just a pizza place ... but a pizza place with a California spin that I just can't get enough of. The ingredients for the pizzas are seasonal, grown in their own garden, and often organic. Each day, they offer a special veggie pizza, a special meat pizza, and a seasonal salad in addition to a full menu of ingredients. The crust is delicious - medium thickness (though many claim that it's thin), wonderful tasting, and seems to have some corn meal. Our main goal is to figure out how to leave some pizza on the plate so that we can actually get to dessert, but that hasn't happened yet. If you live in the City and appreciate fresh ingredients, I would highly suggest checking out Pauline's. We always get the salad - wonderful ingredients and always holds my interest. Let go of control, and go with one of their special pizzas -- even if you aren't sure you'll appreciate the ingredient mix (ie., lemon zest on a pizza?), the specials seem to be tried and true and have not steered us wrong yet.
The first time or two that you go, I would suggest calling ahead to make sure they're open until you get a handle on their schedule. Generally, they are open Tuesday through Saturday, but they also sometimes close when they run out of dough (Which you've gotta love ... can you say FRESH ingredients?). They are open for dinner only.
Pauline's Pizza
260 Valencia Street (at 14th)
San Francisco
415.552.2050
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