Today we revel in all that Italian North Beach has to offer.  North Beach –also of Barbary Coast and beat poet fame– has the misfortune of being located between Fisherman’s Wharf and Union Square/Chinatown.  Like the Haight Ashbury, it is at once oft-maligned and beloved by San Franciscans.

On the weekends, it becomes a scenic tourist highway.  Crowds of people make the one and a half mile journey down Columbus Avenue from Fisherman’s Wharf to downtown San Francisco.  Restaurant hosts line themselves along the parade route, beckoning to the tired and hungry, laminate menus in hand.

On the weekdays, North Beach reveals itself as the intimate enclave its residents insist it still is.  Clearly, that is the best time to go.  Even if you can only make it on a Saturday, here is a day trip that might make you change your mind about North Beach.

I have lined up three cafes known for their cannoli: Caffe Triest, Cavalli Café, and Stella Pastry & Café.  We break up our crawl with lunch at the delightful Michelangelo Ristorante & Caffe and some horsing around at Michelangelo Playground.  Alright, put on your eating pants…

The North Beach Cannoli Crawl (6 hours, 2 walking miles)

Recommended Itinerary:

1. Kicking the party off at Caffé Trieste
2. Lunch at Michelangelo Ristorante & Caffe
3. A cannoli stop at Cavalli Café
4. Cannoli picnic at Michelangelo Playground or Jack Early Park
5. Cannoli at Stella Pastry & Cafe

 

What you’ll need:

1. Cash
2. At least $2 in exact change for bus fare
3. An empty stomach

 

1.       Kicking the party off at Caffé Trieste

Caffé Trieste is an old institution of North Beach, and so what better way to start off our crawl than there?  You will want to hop on either the 8x, 10, 12, 30, or 41 MUNI bus routes, all of which pass through North Beach.  (See a MUNI system map.)  All of these routes cross Market Street, so it is an easy transfer from BART and the MUNI street cars.  You can alternatively walk the mile from the MUNI street car and BART stops on Market Street.  (See here for how to ride the bus, street car, and BART.)

If you’re driving, I recommend parking in one of the parking structures on Vallejo between Powell and Stockton ($3/hr).  I do not recommend trying to park on the streets in North Beach, particularly on a weekend day.

The trip kicks off on the corner of Columbus and Vallejo, where you’ll see Caffe Trieste on the southwest corner of Vallejo and Grant.  Caffe Trieste has existed at this location since the 1950s, towards the end of North Beach’s heyday as an Italian neighborhood (more on that later!)  The café looks like a well-used local establishment, where students hover over textbooks and writers tap away on laptops, and you are momentarily confused as to why there isn’t a heavy cloud of cigarette smoke.

I wanted to like it.  I did.  Even five minutes into our wait in the short 5 person line, I still wanted to like it.  An elderly customer assured me that the wait was worth it!  I still wanted to like it when I got to the counter 15 minutes later.  It must have been the way the barista informed me that he wasn’t serving lunch yet at 12:30pm on a Sunday, and the way he paused and slowly looked at the clock when I asked when they would start serving lunch.  1:00pm.  After we spent 20 minutes in line watching another employee make sandwiches.

We ordered our cannoli and sat down at the large communal table.  I am being entirely objective when I say that the cannoli was not good.  I don’t have to point to any of the nuances of what separates the good from the great here.  The cannoli shells were pre-filled, and they must have done the pre-filling a long time ago because the shell was soft and stale.  The cannoli filling itself was gummy and stuck to the roof of my mouth.  All in all, not a good start to our day.

The GOOD news, though, was that our day got much better from here.

As you exit Caffe Trieste, you can either turn back onto Columbus, or you can avoid the hustle by walking north on Grant Ave.  The restaurant will be on the corner of Union and Columbus, across from Washington Square Park.  This walk takes you through the heart of North Beach.

 

 

 

Italians started migrating to California (before California joined the United States), and North Beach, in the 1840’s, spurred on by revolutions occurring throughout the Italian states (Italy wasn’t a unified country back then).  Their immigration to San Francisco reflected their lives in Italy.  Immigrants settled into micro-regions so that a particular block in North Beach “belonged” to a particular Italian village and others were not welcome.  They were fishermen at “Italy Harbor” (now Fisherman’s Wharf) and laborers at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory.  In 1906, they blanketed their homes in wine-soaked blankets to protect them from the fire raging throughout the city, and it worked.  North Beach was also one of the first neighborhoods rebuilt after the fires since the Italians refused to leave their homes for the homeless shelters set up in the Presidio and other spots around the city.  They used their skills in construction and masonry (and banking) to rebuild their shops and homes in record time.

Italians faced discrimination from the get go, and most recently during World War II.  A “California Senate Factfinding Subcomittee on Unamerican Activities” determined Italians in North Beach were spearheading Fascist activities in California.  Some residents were sent to “relocation camps” along with Japanese residents .  Residents stopped speaking Italian in public, and discouraged teaching children Italian.  Italian societies folded.  After the war, Italians moved out of North Beach for other neighborhoods in the city and the suburbs.

In the 1940’s, only 25% of the city’s Italian immigrants still lived in North Beach.  The beat generation moved in through the 1950’s, displacing even more Italians.  The go go bars took over Broadway in the 1960’s.  By 1970, only 10% of the city’s Italian immigrants lived in North Beach.  Today, North Beach is an explosion of multiculturalism – with Allen Ginsberg’s haunts bumping up against Italian café tables and Chinese produce stalls, all across the street from now-kitschy neon signs offering adult entertainment.

 

2.       Lunch at Michelangelo Ristorante & Caffe

It felt only appropriate that when you are in North Beach, you go to a red sauce Italian restaurant.  It is Italian comfort food, and sometimes, that’s all you really want.  We chose Michelangelo Ristorante & Caffé for its spacious interior and some positive reviews I had read.

I loved this place.  The host and his waitstaff made us feel like the whole restaurant was our dining room, rushing to get a booster seat for the toddler in our group, and not wincing even once when they saw that we were traveling with a newborn.  Instead, they brought the new parents glasses of wine and handed roses to the ladies, even a pink one for the little girl in our group.  What is sweeter than that?

Clearly, I was prepared to love this place regardless of the food, but then the gnocchi with pesto arrived, along with a dedicated parmesan distributor — a man walks around the restaurant with a large bowl of shredded parmesan.  The gnocchi were surprisingly light and fluffy – actually one of the best I’ve had in the U.S., and I’m one of those people who always order the gnocchi.

(Our group had less success with the American entrees – hamburgers and other sandwiches – so I’d recommend sticking to the Italian offerings.)

Continuing along the path of excellent customer service, the host brought out a bowl of gummy bears with the check.  Gummy bears.  This is BRILLIANT.  I never realized how welcome gummy bears could be at the end of a meal.  My sister-in-law and I practically slid onto the table and into the bowl as we tried to comprehend this most spectacular turn of events.

After lunch, it is time for our second cannoli of the day.

 

 

 

3.       A cannoli stop at Cavalli Café

As you walk out of Michelangelo Ristorante & Café, turn right and walk a block south on Columbus to Stockton.  The Café is one door down on Stockton.

We had planned to get cannoli and coffee to go, in order to have a desserty picnic at the park, and that worked out perfectly for us.

Cavalli Café is a new addition to North Beach.  It is cozy and shockingly quiet, particularly given its location at the intersection of Chinatown and North Beach (Stockton and Columbus).  The proprietor was charming and gregarious, regaling us with local gossip all through his intricate and careful preparation of our cannoli.  He packaged them up in a cute brown box and handed it all over with an authentic wide smile.

Be warned that Cavalli Café only accepts cash.  It possibly also accepts IOU’s, as the proprietor was fully prepared to let us walk out of his shop with two cannoli and numerous cups of coffee…without having paid.  “Meh, you can pay me next time,” he offered.  Luckily, every major bank has an ATM right outside his door, so we didn’t have to rely on his generosity.

Take the packaged cannoli and either head north on Columbus (to avoid most of the hills) or head into the neighborhood, and turn right and walk north on Mason or Taylor.  Turn left on Greenwich.  (Warning: the last half block of Greenwich is a very steep hill.)

4.       Cannoli picnic at Michelangelo Playground or Jack Early Park

I believe this playground is the most off the beaten path site in all of North Beach.  Perhaps the only more secluded site is Jack Early Park (up a semi-hidden stairwell on Grant Ave, between Chestnut and Francisco, and offers bay views in a greenery-enshrouded space not much larger than your living room) – it is worth the longish walk northeast of Columbus.

Michelangelo Playground is similarly secluded, with a large jungle gym and tire swing in a sand lot in addition to a half basketball court and yard.  As we arrived, a child’s birthday party celebration was drawing to a close at the picnic table under a vine covered arbor.  The toddler in our group was mesmerized particularly by the slide and a young family rough housing around the rest of the park.  During our visit, there were only one or two other families there, lending the playground the feel of a familial oasis in the big city.  It was a very nice break from the whirlwind mobs of Columbus Ave.

 

 

 

While the children played, we opened and sampled our Cavalli Café cannoli.  First, they were a work of art.  The café tops the cannoli with candied orange, which was a welcome addition.  The cannoli shell was crunchy and bubbly, and the filling was grainy and tart, if maybe a bit too sweet and not grainy enough.  However, the chocolate morsels were too large — not the mini morsels I am used to.  The larger morsels resulted in some bites that were just too overwhelmingly CHOCOLATE.  They were very good, but not quite perfect.

After playing and running off all these extra calories, it’s time to head to our last stop of the day.

 

 

 

5.       Cannoli at Stella Pastry & Café

Walk east along Greenwich until you get to Columbus and take a right.  Stella Pastry & Cafe will be three blocks down on your left.

Stella Pastry & Cafe is very very pretty, and dates back to 1942.  It is the antique store to Caffe Trieste’s thrift shop.  Parisian marble tables with Thonet café chairs line the windows indoors and outdoors.  The service was friendly and efficient.

I couldn’t see whether they filled my cannoli on the spot.  Even if they were pre-filled, there was little noticeable deleterious effect on the cannoli shell.  It was crunchy and nutty (although, tasted slightly less fresh than Cavalli’s shell), and the filling was grainy and thick with mini chocolate morsels.  If I could take the candied orange bits from Cavalli Café’s cannoli and its shell, and pair it with Stella’s filling, we would probably have a winner.

In all, Stella’s is a perfect spot to relax with a coffee, cannoli, and good company.  On a weekday, its outdoor tables were filled with a rotating cast of elderly regulars, sipping espresso, debating politics, and people watching.  For a moment, North Beach’s reputation as a neighborhood past its prime felt ill-deserved and unfortunate — this North Beach felt quaint and intimate.

I finished my last bite of cannoli and headed for the bus, once again swept into the familiar chaos of Columbus.