Delarosa

37 Yerba Buena Lane, SOMA. L-D daily. No reservations.

Featuring Roman-style pizza and small plates, roaringly-popular Delarosa has mostly communal seating. Tabletops and floors are hardwood, and big windows open to views of the outside walkway--all adding to the potential for an ear-splitting noise level.

interior of Delarosa in San Francisco

My favorite menu item is the Margherita pizza topped with creamy melted burrata--soooo good! Pizzas are served on raised stands, and napkins are generously-sized kitchen towels--a boon for those of us who run through numerous paper napkins at every meal.

Margherita pizza at Delarosa in San Francisco

Though to accompany it we chose broccolini with garlic and really hot little red peppers

broccolini at Delarosa in San Francisco

as well as deep-fried asparagus with caper aioli,

deep-fried asparagus at Delarosa in San Francisco

others were chattering about the marinated olives with fennel and citrus and the crispy tagliolini dumplings. Non-pizza panini and pastas are also enticing. With only a little room left for dessert, we shared three Bomboloni caldi (warm housemade donuts) with chocolate, raspberry, and marscapone sauces and wound up leaving one behind.

Bomboloni donuts at Delarosa in San Francisco

Note that a vegan cheese substitute is available on pizza. Drinks include craft beers, Italian and Californian wines, and delicious cocktails. I ordered the most popular cocktail--a murky-looking, smoky-tasting Painted Ladies (mezcal, tamarind, chili tincture, lemon bitters, lime)--and my partner ordered a slightly more colorful Golden Coast bourbon (batavia arrack, apricot, pineapple, orange, lime).

cocktail delivery at Delarosa in San Francisco

My mouth actually watered as I read this menu in advance. One visit just won’t do it. I’ll be back.

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Since this location of Delarosa (the original at 2175 Chestnut Street in the Marina) is right across the walkway from the Contemporary Jewish Museum, you might want to time your meal to coordinate with a museum visit. I had dinner here after a Thursday night museum visit--when the admission drops to $5 after 5 p.m. and includes an exhibit tour at 5:30 p.m.--and was pleased to see “Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution Show,” which runs through July 5. (“Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition” is coming next.) Apparently Bill always liked to feed people. As a child, he stole apples from an orchard to share with his fellow orphans, and he was the last kid from his orphanage selected for fostering--a sadness that followed him through his life. And so this show begins with the actual bucket that held the apples that he gave away to patrons at the Fillmore--a tradition that continues today. The exhibit includes plenty more stories and some spectacular behind-the-scenes images of those trippy hippie days, all while era-appropriate music plays in the background. It is groovy, man, really groovy. More about the museum . . .