Menu Driven by Gary Wolf
Welcome to my parlor Enjoying a slice at a cozy new neighborhood fixture, Panhandle Pizza  . . . I dig this
new pizza place, Panhandle. There were two things about it I didn't quite
grasp at first -- closed Tuesdays, was one; Creole pizza, was the other --
but eventually the logic dawned. Or, rather, was explained by Don Schaan, a
North Dakota-born-and-raised, Bernal Heights-dwelling artist who, with
partner Steven Flamm, recently gave birth to this small but promising
establishment.
"We've been eying this
particular place on Hayes Street for a long time," says Schaan, "but it
took us a year to land it. A friend of a friend of the landlady got it
after we thought we had it arranged. We were disappointed, since we were
sort of counting on it." The landlady's first choice to occupy the tiny
space set up a little card shop, and Flamm and Schaan hung around, biding
their time. Happily, before the year was out, the card shop folded, and
the two friends got their chance.
"No other place matched this
one," Schaan says. "There's a lack of restaurants between the Panhandle and
Geary. With the hospitals, USF and the density of the neighborhood, we knew
we would be welcome. I guess I didn't have the nerve to set up a restaurant
in the heart of the Mission or somewhere there are 40 other places."
The large, dense area east of
the part and below Stanyan lacks a distinct identity. It is, as Schaan puts
it, "sort of falling off the margins" of the Haight Street strip. Panhandle
Pizza is on Hayes near Cole, next door to the Sacred Grounds Cafe, which has
provided a genial pit stop for neighborhood slackers for as long as anybody
cares to remember. But Sacred Grounds has always seemed a little distant and
isolated, even though it is within a few blocks of the noisiest and most
raggedly energetic bohemian-exploitation district in the United States.
Cradled beneath the weird arc
created by certain landmarks of mysticism and madness -- the gibbering mania
of Cole and Haight; the quiet, medicated insanity of the psychiatric floor
of St. Mary's Hospital; and the whispered conversation of confessionals at
the twin-spired church on Fulton -- are block after block of stable,
residential apartments inhabited by USF students and other motley species of
San Franciscans. Call it the Western Addition, if you want, but this name
lacks content. Perhaps, along with a great pie, the new pizzeria will revive
the area's old name: the Panhandle neighborhood.
This suggestion makes good
sense because Panhandle Pizza seems likely to be a fixture on Hayes for
many years. Small, with only four tables and a miniature counter, it turns
out eight varieties of above-average pie. The cornmeal and olive oil crust
is slightly caky, which may offend purists, but will please everyone else.
The thick, well-garlicked sauce and exceptional cheeses -- whole milk
mozzarella, fontina and parmesan -- give Panhandle's pies a gourmet, East Bay
character. The pesto pizzas are outstanding, with thick nutty pesto taking
the place of the oil-and-parsley concoctions frequently and fraudulently sold
under the same name.
The setting is relaxed and the
workers are nice. Menu Driven bought dinner for the savvy staff of the
Writing Palor, a new school for scribblers whose fliers are doing battle with
the placards for Capoeira and graphotherapy ("change your handwriting, change
your life") that decorate cafes throughout the city (may the best pushpins win!).
The two professors pronounced Panhandle's pizza superior.
The fact that Panhandle is not
open on Tuesday is, Schaan admits, "a little arbitrary." The two owners
needed some time off. "Steve and I just put in so many hours. If we weren't
closed Tuesday, we wouldn't have that respite. Our idea was that pizza and
Monday Night Football go hand in hand." Since the Panhandle was
opened with Schaan and Flamm's personal savings, they haven't been able to
get out from behind the counter. Schaan's teenage kids also pitch in. One
hopes Panhandle's coming success won't change the place much, for it has that
lingering quality of attentiveness and care that comes from having one or two
owners present at all times; a quality that often evaporates as soon as
swelling cash flow makes it possible to farm out most of the work to those
juvenile delinquents with whom, by now, we all thoroughly sympathize --
except when we're eating their pizzas.
As for the Creole pizza, a
mixture of andouille sausage, corn, bell pepper and goat cheese, it seems
like a young and enthusiastic entry that, from carrying too heavy a cultural
baggage -- on the right side New Orleans, on the left side California --
has stumbled at the gate. If the owners won't balk at a friendly suggestion,
Menu Driven says scratch it. That andouille sausage is strong meat, and the
poor goat is trampled. But this is just one analyst's nitpicky figuration.
In general, Flamm, Schaan and Panhandle are off to an excellent start."
- Gary Wolf, SF Weekly, October 27, 1993 LUNCH
Thursday/Friday 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
DINNER
7 nights 4:00 - 11:00 p.m.
WEEKEND HOURS
3:00 - 11:00 p.m. |
panhandle@sfpizza.com
