My friend Trina and I were supposed to get together while I was in San Francisco and as luck would have it, one of the areas I still hadn't eaten my way through also happens to house one of Trina's favorite spots, Tommaso's. North Beach, the Italian enclave of San Francisco that also houses the famous City Lights bookstore, is an awesome part of town filled with excellent restaurants many oddly surrounded by raunchy sex shops.
Tommaso's sits next to the self-proclaimed "raunchiest video store in San Francisco", and across the street from Larry Flynt's Hustler Club. But don't let this fool you: the restaurant is small, crowded, and loud, and the decor is simple.
The food is OUTSTANDING. Tommaso's has been consistently rated as one of the best restaurants in the city and one of the best pizza houses in the country. . . that's right, the country. So Trina joined my two cohorts in crime and me. It was so much fun. We split two bottles of wine, one being the house wine (superb); a house pizza (outstanding); and then we also had the house manicotti with meatballs that was so yummy I ate way past the point of being full. For dessert, we and split the tiramisu and the raspberry cheesecake.
A couple of observations about Tommaso's: Despite the incredible amount of people trying to get in and despite the noise level of those of us all competing for ear space, the wait staff was calm and non-hurried. The plain white decor and unattractive latticework on the walls belies the elegance of the food, which was both wonderful in presentation and in flavor. Our waiter also turned out to be one of the owners. We noticed this only after dinner as we were leaving and saw a review, with his picture, on the wall.