Red Sauce Italian with Booths?

[vliang]

Looking for a place like this in SF. Know of any?

[Zach Georgopoulos]

I can't recall if the latest location of Little Joe's (5th & Mission in the Pickwick Hotel) has booths, but it is most certainly a red sauce joint. Also Tomasso's, though known more for pizza, has booths and classic red sauce dishes.

-----
Little Joe's
1106 Market St, San Francisco, CA

[mariacarmen]

Ernestos in the Outer Richmond. LOVE their stuffed clamshells.

http://sanfrancisco.menupages.com/restaurants/ernestos-italian-restaurant/menu
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ernestos-ital...
2301 Clement St
(between 24th Ave & 25th Ave
)San Francisco, CA 94121

[ducky]

Sodini's very near Grant & Green in North Beach. They don't take reservations, but it's good old school Italian.

-----
Sodini's
510 Green St, San Francisco, CA 94133

[Robert Lauriston]

Sodini's used to be Green Valley. It's old-school North Beach Italian, which isn't East Coast red sauce Italian. I don't think it's quite as old-school NB as Capp's Corner.

-----
Capp's Corner
1600 Powell St, San Francisco, CA 94133

Sodini's
510 Green St, San Francisco, CA 94133

[Gustavo Glenmorangie]

Isn't it Sodini's whose window proudly boasts "No reservations. No desserts. No credit cards."? Seriously old-school. North Beach or otherwise.

-----
Sodini's
510 Green St, San Francisco, CA 94133

[Robert Lauriston]

Sodini's isn't as old-school as Green Valley was before the Sodinis took over—which is probably for the best, since, with the sole exception of Capp's Corner, all the old-school North Beach family style places went out of business.

-----
Capp's Corner
1600 Powell St, San Francisco, CA 94133

Sodini's
510 Green St, San Francisco, CA 94133

[DavidT]

You could try the Gold Mirror (Traval & 18th Avenue) or Marcello's (Traval & 31st Avenue). I think both places still have some booths.

If you wanted to venture a little further, try Joe's of Westlake in Daly City.

[Robert Lauriston]

Except for the location, Bertolucci's is probably exactly what you're looking for. Nothing like it in SF that I know of.

Tommaso's, but only the pizza is good, and to get a booth you probably have to have a party of four and wait an hour.

Ceasar's, but the food is very hit and miss.

Sam's Grill is sort of Italian and has booths.

-----
Sam's Grill & Sea Food Restaurant
374 Bush St, San Francisco, CA 94104

Tommaso Ristorante Italiano
1042 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 94133

Sodini's Bertoluccis Ristorante
421 Cypress Avenue, South San Francisco, CA 94080

Caesar's Italian Restaurant
2299 Powell St, San Francisco, CA 94133

[alina555]

+1 on Bertolucci's rec. It wad the first place I thought of when I read this thread.

[Windy]

No booths but the right food: Il Borgo or La Traviata

Pi bar has meatballs and spaghetti with a couple of small booths but is really a bar.

booths and a lot of garlic: Gaspare's pizza

-----
Il Borgo
500 Fell St, San Francisco, CA 94102

La Traviata
2854 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Gaspare Pizza House
5546 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94121

Pi Bar
1432 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[Annie S.]

La Traviata definitely had some booths last time I was there (which was some years ago). They show on Yelp photos.

-----
La Traviata
2854 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[Robert Lauriston]

La Traviata used to be the other kind of Italian restaurant, what they used to call "northern Italian," i.e. they specialized in fresh egg pasta in cream sauce and didn't use a lot of tomatoes. Though looking at the menu on menupages.com these days they seem to be 50-50.

-----
La Traviata
2854 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[Windy]

They have long padded seats against the wall. If you sit in the corner, you might call it a booth, but it's not like the booths at Gaspare's.

We had quite a good dinner at La Traviata recently.

-----
La Traviata
2854 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[bigwheel042]

Is the non-pizza food any good at Pi Bar? I was very unimpressed by the pizza and would much rather have eaten at the nearby Arizmendi, Pizza Di Mano, or Escape From New York.

-----
Pizza Di Mano
3331 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

[Robert Lauriston]

Quality of pizza aside, those are slice places, not the kind of restaurants this topic is about.

[bigwheel042]

Right, I'm just saying that if their pizza wasn't any good (and was in fact significantly worse than other slice joints within two blocks), I'm not expecting their pasta to be any good either without some reports to the contrary.

[Windy]

I haven't had the pasta, but the meatballs looked good (available as sandwiches as well as on top of spaghetti). Caesar salad was quite decent.

The slices are what they are: a certain kind of NY slice. Reminds me of what I ate in college. Not in the same class as Rotten City, but it's a good neighborhood bar.

[mariacarmen]

i think they get the crust right, but i've never had a slice that had any flavor at all. (it gets delivered a lot for patrons to share at a neighborhood bar.) always have to doctor it up with parm & lots of dried chili flakes. and i realize it's stupid to keep eating something i don't like, but it's free, and late at night with a cocktail and a pool table...