By Virginia Miller
Locals don’t exactly flock to downtown San Francisco in regular times, and certainly not post-pandemic as Union Square and neighboring Tenderloin are hit the hardest. But numerous changes have been bringing downtown (slowly) back. The newest is Corzetti, just opened in the new Hotel G off Union Square on August 14, 2023.
It’s the latest from Adriano Paganini’s Back of the House, Inc. group behind many SF restaurant staples, including a Mano, Beretta, Delarosa, Flores, Starbelly and Super Duper Burger.
Like Paganini’s The Tailor’s Son in Pac Heights, Corzetti is more personal, showcasing the seafood-centric cuisine of Northern Italy’s Ligurian coast where Paganini spent summers growing up. He hails from just outside Milan in the Lombardy region, but Liguria is a neighboring region just north of Tuscany and home to beloved Cinque Terre, the five magical villages I stayed in during a month I spent in Tuscany.
Paganini has called SF home for over 30 years, often naming the deep SF and NorCal connection and similarities to Northern Italy. Despite being a riskier time to invest in Union Square, his new restaurant is open nightly with lunch and happy hour coming.
As my partner Dan (“The Renaissance Man”) and I walk in on a recent Monday night, decor impresses first. Nautical touches referencing wooden Italian boats, a dramatic ceiling wood carving and accents of mint green, mustard yellow and peachy-red flank lemon wallpaper for a sunny, breezy touch in the ROY Hospitality-designed space.
Executive chef Tali Missirlian was formerly chef de cuisine at the aforementioned Tailor’s Son, working with Paganini to hone Corzetti’s Ligurian-inspired menu. What is this Italian region known for, foodwise? Liguria is home to pandolce, minestrone, focaccia and ravioli, for goodness sakes.
It’s unusual to see a focaccia section on a menu surrounded by pastas, risotto, pizza, antipasti and secondi. There are two “thick” focaccia in the style many will be familiar with, laden with olives or onions and rosemary. But if there is one must-order dish on the whole menu it’s the divine Di Recco, a cheese-stuffed, thin focaccia. This Ligurian specialty is dreamy in its dough alone, but studded with crescenza and fontina cheeses — plus an add-on option of thinly-shaved mortadella — and it’s heaven. In its perfectly-executed simplicity, it’s confirmation of why Italy is one of the world’s food meccas when “just” dough and cheese can be this revelatory.
A Genoa fish stew, ciuppin, is on the menu, packed with head-on shrimp, cod, mussels, clams and seafood tomato broth. It recalls cioppino, an SF dish created by Italian immigrants here back in the 1800s, clearly evolving off dishes like this from native Italy. Genovese pesto and pastas hold a large piece of real estate on the menu, like pansoti con salsa di noci, an al dente stuffed pasta filled with foraged greens and herbs in creamy walnut sauce, which transports me back to memorable Autumns spent in Northern Italy. Another Ligurian pasta favorite is here: their namesake corzetti, which are circular, stamped, thin rounds of pasta. Here, they’re teeming in taleggio crema with hen of the woods mushrooms and sage. The dish also tastes of fall, but as crucial as al dente is to perfected pasta, these were a touch too chewy on my visit.
Pizzas veer another direction from ubiquitous Neapolitan pizzas we have in vast excellence around town. Corzetti serves piscialandrea, a paper-thin style of pizza, normally topped with tomato and anchovies in Liguria. The dough is made with flour, yeast, salt, extra-virgin olive oil and water, cracker-thin and crispy. There are four pizzas on the initial menu, including classic anchovy. We opted for the Vessalico, touched with tomato sauce, spicy soppressata salumi, red onions, Calabrian chilies and parmigiano cheese. It was quite spicy with meaty resonance, but felt lighter due to its thinness.
While I skipped the three larger secondi options to try more small plates, focaccia, pizza and pastas, I would have tried one of my Mediterranean favorites: whole branzino fish purely accented with rosemary, lemon, olives and tomatoes. On antipasti side, I’m a sucker for fritto misto or fried fish, lemon and veggies. Corzetti fries up smelts, lemon and cod dipped in chili aioli. Tiny little smelts are the perfect fried snack fish, popping in the mouth. Crudo is another standard go-to for me, the yin to fried seafood’s yang. Corzetti’s raw fish crudo was kampachi (yellowtail), silky with fresh tomatoes, taggiasca olives, fried capers and garlic chips in basil oil.
How about drinks? Cocktails were created by my friends Nora Furst, Christopher Longoria and Stephanie Gonnet of West Bev. Nora created cocktails for Paganini’s restaurants like Lolinda, Belga and Delarosa, prior. Starting with a Lambrusco spritz is always the right choice, especially when their Pizza Spritz balances Lambrusco’s robust lushness with the bitter of La Sirene bitter artigianale, lemon, salt, soda and “secret sauce” of oregano, imparting a savory-herbaceous touch. A “Gilda Italiano” garnish mimics the Spanish Gilda, a Basque pinxto (bite) of skewered olives, guindilla peppers and anchovies.
It’s hard to resist an olive leaf martini, but we opted for the more creative, seasonal and culinary, Italian Futurist movement-inspired cocktails since more unusual compared to other Italian bar menus. The Anguria Estivo cocktail sang of summer in its balanced mix of fresh watermelon juice, basil eau de vie, blanco tequila, Select Aperitivo, orgeat, lemon and cracked black pepper with a cubed garnish of soft ricotta salata cheese.
La Colomba tastes like NorCal fall as it shows off sungold tomatoes in a fresh juice with grapefruit juice, Calabrian chilies, honey, lime and basil over a base of blanco tequila, mezcal and Aperitivo Cappelletti. Both taste Italian, show off Bay Area produce, are food friendly and culinary. Without being too sweet, the vibrant, passionfruit-forward After Como cocktail was my ideal dessert, a rum blend with Amaro Averna, manzanilla sherry, lemon, salt, mint and a touch of Lazzaroni amaretto. The drink is nutty, bitter, tart and savory by turns.
Too bad you’re also going to want to dig into beverage director Caterina Mirabelli’s Italy-centric — with a few Californian — wine list, too. They focus on “easy to drink sparkling and natural wines,” per the press release, but I took to their orange/skin contact section, tasting side-by-side glories of a 2017 Il Carpino Pinot Grigio and a 2019 Visintini Friuliano “Anfora,” both natural, both from my beloved Northern Italy region of Friuli, one of the best wine regions in the world.
On the sparkling side, a 2019 San Luris Malvasia skin-fermented natural wine from Friuli confirms there is plenty for us wine geeks on Corzetti’s menu, amid bold Super Tuscans or whites like a zippy 2021 Angelo Grillo from Sicily. A couple non-alcoholic cocktails and beers on draft round out the food-friendly drink offerings.
Doubling up on dessert meant we started with latte fritto, aka fried milk, partnered with vanilla ice cream in lemon zest. These little square fried pockets ooze creamy goodness inside, almost as if a bombolini (Italian doughnut) met mochi, though the inside chew isn’t as thick as mochi. It’s my top dessert here, as much as I appreciated cooling frozen gianduja hazelnut chocolate mousse in blackberry compote and creme fraiche.
Earnest service and a mix of locals and tourists felt good on a Monday night. I can only imagine weekend or pre-and post-theater buzz. Corzetti’s breezy, Northern coastal Italian vibes and its location right next to the Curran and A.C.T.’s Toni Rembi Theater plus Union Square, center it for a downtown SF revival. Like Paganini, I weary of the oft-exaggerated, scapegoating news on San Francisco and appreciate his and the Back of the House team’s “money where their mouth is” efforts to invest in downtown and bring new life to this busy corner. Viva Italia! Viva San Francisco! And cheers to the ongoing revival of downtown and committed SF locals like Paganini.
// 398 Geary Street, www.corzettisf.com
Virginia Miller is a San Francisco-based food & drink writer.
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