A16 Review

While I went to a number of festivals in the last two weeks, I haven't managed to write about the food or other activities involved, so all I have for you this week is the A16 review:

One pizza we tried at A16 was very good but everything else we ordered including another pizza was merely okay. Service too was disappointing: we were kept waiting for almost half an hour after our reservation. (They did try to make up for it by giving us (not very good) complimentary champagne while we were waiting.)

The meal opened with some decent soft bread and poor, almost tasteless, olive oil. "What's the point of dipping?" one attendee asked. (By contrast, as an addendum from last week, Chez Papa provided us which a decent baguette, wrapped to look as if it were warm (which it was not) and some very good olive spread.)

We ordered "mozzarella burrata with olive oil, sea salt and crostini" as an appetizer. Burrata is basically a type of mozzarella. We were all disappointed. The cheese was rubbery and unexciting and the crispy bread with which it was served was mediocre and didn't match the cheese well. I, having read many raves about this from chowhounds, was especially disappointed. Despite having this dish left on the table for most of the meal, we didn't bother finishing it.

We also had the marinara pizza (a pizza of tomato, oregano, garlic, and olive oil), a true thin Italian pizza. It was very good; the individual components tasted good on their own and the whole pizza worked well together. The crust was soft but nowhere soggy.

Next came the "orecchiette with octopus, fresh borlotti beans, chiles and mint," or, roughly, a pasta dish with octopus and beans. It had an unusual but pleasant scent from the cooked octopus but the dish, although it grew on us, was only okay. The pasta was too firm for our tastes, though apparently that's the standard method of cooking in Campania, the region of Italy where the restaurant purports to be from. We liked the octopus and beans though one attendee described our sentiments (paraphrased) as, "This reminds me of trying to cook a recipe at home, doing something wrong, and ending up with this. I'd be a little surprised but not displeased since it is decent, but it's not something I'd do intentionally."

Our intended last entree was the roasted lamb. Arriving in six small pieces, the taste and quantity of it was "adequate." The lamb itself was good but it had a lot of fat around it, reminding us of the layers of fat on duck. Besides being unusual (how many of you have had such fatty lamb?) this taste of too much fat bothered some of us.

Still a bit hungry, rather than hope for a good dessert, we turned back to what we thought to be a sure shot -the pizza- and ordered a margherita (pizza with tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil). This was disappointing, especially in contrast with the marinara. The crust, although it looked the same as the marinara's, turned out to be slightly crispier and have a burnt flavor. The cheese -the only significant addition to this pizza from the last- had the same rubbery mostly flavorless taste of the burrata. Kraft mozzarella would've been better. And now, by seeing its absence, we realized the marinara pizza actually got a lot of great flavor from the oregano.

Total came to $27/person including tax and tip. No drinks were ordered, despite the restaurant being famous for its Italian wine list.

Probably none of us would come back given the difficulty in getting a reservation -one has to plan at least a week ahead- and the quality of the food. But if we did come back, we'd definitely stick with the pizza because of its quality (or at least some chance of quality) and because it has a much higher quantity to price ratio than anything else.

As for the atmosphere, it was upscale, with an amazingly homogeneous clientele; besides our party, we only spotted one non-white in the whole restaurant. It being in the Marinara, there was also a number of very pretty people.

Incidentally, A16 has a web site (which I neglected to mention in the original announcement):

http://www.a16sf.com/

Original Announcement

This Wednesday at 8:30pm we'll head to A16, a Marina-district Italian restaurant specializing in true thin Neapolitan pizzas and other southern Italian fare. This was the "ringer" in the Chronicle's pizza joint competition and is fairly well liked by reviewers and chowhounds alike.

Please tell me if you are coming! (And you should want to come; I had to make reservations a week in advance!)

Comments from Other Attendees

Seth's Comment:

I thought the pizza at this place was just very poor in quality for the price and relative to the rating. Also, now that I've been to Italy, it doesn't really taste like Italian pizza either, so the sophisticated "not New York style" pizza is also not Italian really. California cuisine works well on many foods. Pizza is definitely not one of them.

-Seth

Mark's Comment:

This isn't intended to be Californian cuisine. It's intended to be food from the area of Italy around Naples. I wonder how much pizza styles vary around Italy. But I do think one pizza was very good, and the other was not. (Surprising, since they were supposed to be nearly identical.) And I certainly think the pizza is a much better deal than the far more expensive regular entrees.

-Mark

Feel free to add remarks here.