π, yet more pizza in the mission?

[augustiner]

i walked past the space that used to house suriya, the thai restaurant on valencia between 26th and 25th, and noted work on a new restaurant that will be called π. as in pie. pizza pie. there was a letter taped to the window from the owners reminiscing about "the pizza man" from growing up in queens. basically the letter says that it's supposed to be new york style pizza with better ingredients. you know, fresh, seasonsustainablelocalblahblah. they're stating that hopefully when people from back east come to visit and ask where to get pizza, they will no longer have to stare at their feet and change the subject.

i didn't see any indication of when they are set to open, but peering through the shut curtains, the space inside looks ready to go.

so, between delfina pizzeria, beretta, flour+water, and this place, there will be no shortage of hip pizza joints in the mission for people to argue about. although this one will be really close to me, so here's crossing my fingers that it will be good. although i wouldn't be able to chime in on how it stands up to new york pizza, but that's not important to me anyway.

[bernalman]

I heard they were going to slice 22 inch diameter pizzas into 7 slices, so that each pizza slice would be 3.14 inches.

[steve h.]

22/7 would be an interesting name for a pi shop.

[SarahKC]

When's it supposed to open?

[BernalKC]

Last I heard, via EaterSf in late August, it was day to day. Permitting issues == unpredictable opening. http://sf.eater.com/tags/pi-bar

[Robert Lauriston]

Nobody ever knows how long it will take to pass inspections, particularly in SF.

[rworange]

Dumb name. Hope the pizza is better. Do people who name restaurants unsearchable names even use the internet?

[wolfe]

It depends on how much you want to search.
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives...

[Robert Lauriston]

π is actually quite searchable:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sour...

[rworange]

But then I have to first figure out whar combo of keys will produce yhat symbol

[Robert Lauriston]

If it's something you're looking at onscreen, just copy and paste.

[rworange]

And if I'm not looking at it on the screen?

I am not trying to look it up now since it isn't open. The point is they lose business doing little tricks like this. They certainly won't get my business.

[Robert Lauriston]

Given the apparently insatiable demand for pizza in that neighborhood, that's probably not a problem.

[rworange]

Hey ... let's get pizza tonight. How about that new place.

Calls information

Gets recorded message and asks for pie ... no listing ... gets live operator who asks "How do you spell that?"

Moment of silence

Never mind ... let me have the number for ...names another nearby pizza place.

Any restaurant that positions itself to lose business is dumb

[ernie in berkeley]

It's like the Mission place named "Pizzeria". Try doing a Google search to find the address.

[Robert Lauriston]

Wow, that seems like it might be a deliberate attempt to dodge Web searches. Like the wine bar called WINE.

-----
Pizzeria
659 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[Pei]

It's still a dumb name. It's barely a pun. It would be as if flour + water's name were a picture of a daisy (get it, flower?) + H2O

Plus, how does pi even relate to pizza pie? Maybe if the owner trained for 3.14 years in New York or bakes the pies for 3.14 minutes or uses 3.14 pounds of flour per batch of dough. I don't know. It annoys me.

[Frosty Melon]

Not sure if it's still the plan, but I swear I recall an early report that slices were going to start at $3.14. It's still a stretch to justify the name, but there it is.

[wolfe]

I don't know, π is related to circles. Pizzas are usually round. Slices made across the pizza are diameters. I figure the area of the pizza by πr-squared and divide the cost of the pizza by that value to come up with the cost/sq. inch. That's another reason I like Lanesplitter cheese pizza. Not only is it good but the extra large, pick up only, is about 4 cents/ sq. inch.

[psb]

>It's still a dumb name. It's barely a pun.
>
whenever i go there, i think ħ [pronounced h-bar, aka h/2pi, from planck's constant]
would have been a more clever "geeky" name.

i had a sausage and pep slice tonight. they werent as good as before, but
acceptable.

whether or not $3.14 is steep for a cheese slice, the 25cent
per extra topping is a good deal, esp since they give you a decent amount
of pepperoni. arinell is too unreliable, and if were going to pull out the fancy
math, the Arinell Expectation Value is not good at all [you integrate over the
continuum of slice quality, multiplied by probability and compare to the price ...
at least 50% of the slices dont come out well enough to have a consumer
surplus].

[BernalKC]

"Range" is another name where someone forget to consider Google. Now that they are successful it is semi-easy to search for them, but when they opened I remember it was basically impossible to search for 'restaurant range valencia' since every restaurant has a price range.... marketing in the age of page rank...