Give Me Some Food

Christian and Aaron, who live across the bay in Alameda, are some of our special foodie friends. No...not that kind of "special". What I mean is I basically trust their recommendations on any restaurant.  Aaron used to work for Manresa in Los Gatos, where I had one of the top five meals of my life thus far; he knows good food and what Felix and I will like which means I don't always have to be the one to pick where we go to eat. Last Friday, he choose Pizzaiolo on Telegraph in Oakland.

You have to be ready for the wait- it's long- but it's worth it and I would do it again. Aaron and Christian were nice enough to go ahead and put our names in, so they were waiting even longer than we were. But there are a few benches outside, and it was a pleasant night, so we were happy. The restaurant front is very unassuming, we probably would have passed it, had we not had the address (and recognized our friends out front):

The name is in really small white letters on the side window (and has a white curtain behind them which doesn't help!) so don't try to read the name as you drive by- we wouldn't want you to do something stupidly insane, like run into a pedestrian.

Now, I've heard some people mention Zachary's and Pizzaiolo in the same breath, probably because they both serve pizza and are both good.  But believe me there is no way to compare these two restaurants. Let's do some word association...

Zachary's: Long Wait, Deep Dish, Chicago, Hippie, Berkeley College Crowd, So-Crowded-You-Can't-Move, Patchouli Oil, Hang Out, Greatful Dead, Wait Staff Ambivalent.

Pizzaiolo: Long Wait, Casual Delfina, New York, Berkeley College Crowd (that has graduated and become yuppie-foodies), These-jeans-look-vintage-but-cost-$200, Hip, Jazz, Wait Staff Helpful.

How was that?

So once we were finally seated, basically everything looked amazing on the menu (which changes daily). I think I looked at the menu for 15 minutes and still didn't know what to order or how much food would be enough (fyi- a pizza serves about 2 people). Our server was very helpful and gave tons of recommendations. I ended up ordering the Pappa al Pomadoro for my starter which was a bread and tomato soup.

I think I might just be a sucker for tomato soup. I know I talked about Emandal tomato soup just last week, but this soup was delicious in a totally different way. It was a lot heavier because of the bread and cheese. Christian mentioned that it was as if someone put a pizza in a blender. That probably doesn't sound great, but now that I've tasted it, I know what she means. It was more a comment on how filling the soup was- I would have been fine with the Pappa al Pomadoro as my dinner, but next, we split a couple pizzas:

This was, in my opinion, the best pizza we had out of the two- and it was a tweak to the menu. This is the Margherita and bufula (tomatoes and mozzarella) pizza with added house-made sausage. The sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the mozzarella and the savory sausage made this a perfect combo.

And the dessert that caught my attention was the blueberry pie:

Sometimes, when I have a berry pie, it is hard to keep together once you cut it because the berry filling is so runny. Not here. This pie filling had the perfect consistency and held nicely to a fork. We learned from our waiter that the pie comes from Bakesale Betty, just down the street. I heard she also makes a mean fried chicken sandwich. We passed her bakery on the way back to the car and it looked very quaint and retro. I almost broke in to steal some pies, but then I decided against it. Why end such a perfect meal with a trip to jail?

Pizzaiolo
5008 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland
510-652-4888