Sometimes you’re out for the day, and you have really good intentions to go home early and cook dinner. Then you have a bit of wine, and then maybe a cocktail. Before you know it, you’ve spent the day doing a day drinking crawl through the city, and well, you don’t have the time nor energy to go home and cook. I’m not saying this happened to me one weekend, and while Zero Zero wasn’t necessarily my first choice of places to go to, it did have seating, and when you’ve been drinking, a whole lot of carbs sound amazing to help ease the stomach, so we did find ourselves here.
They have both pizza and pasta, and I’m pretty sure the name is based on the flour one uses to make said pizza and pasta. I have had a pizza from here in the past, but we had recently eaten pizza, so we both decided that pasta was the way to go. And while we weren’t stoned, the stoner garlic bread ($9) sounded amazing, so we decided to start with that. We followed it with Dungeness crab spaghetti ($27) and squid ink conchiglie ($26) with a side of charred peas (you know for the greens, $8).
Of course, we had some more wine, and they had some pretty nice Italian wines on the menu. The garlic bread came out and looked epic. It’s made with garlic, Calabrian chili, basil and three cheeses. It definitely looked and smelled like something a stoner would want, and it was absolutely brilliant. Our mains came out, and they both looked great again. The crab spaghetti was nice, but the star was the squid ink conchiglie. It had the perfect balance of briny seafood and citrus, and I was slightly jealous of my partner’s dish.
There were a few interesting grappas on the digestif menu, so I decided dessert might be in order. They have a fairly traditional Italian dessert menu, with the exception of some fancy soft serve ice cream with a selection of toppings. You pay $7 for the ice cream, and then pay for whichever toppings you want, and we went with the Calabrian chili caramel ($2), although the olive oil and sea salt also sounded interesting. The ice cream was a great way to end the meal and the caramel was the right amount of sweet and spicy.
I think Zero Zero is definitely a place I’d go back to, especially if I needed some food after some day drinking. The garlic bread is phenomenal, and the pasta was fairly decent as well. I might look into the pizzas next time, as I don’t remember how good they were. It’s a nice casual Italian eatery located pretty conveniently for me!
Score: 4/5
Recommendation: Stoner garlic bread, and ice cream!
Zero Zero
826 Folsom St
San Francisco, CA 94107
