For weeks, people have been pressing their noses against windows to peer at balls of pizza dough, leaving welcome-to-the-neighborhood notes, and leaning through the front door to ask when one of the Bay Area’s most acclaimed pizzerias will open its first-ever San Francisco location.
The wait is over: The highly anticipated San Francisco location of Rose Pizzeria debuts today at 1 Clement St. in the Inner Richmond.
It’s a larger, even more ambitious iteration of couple Gerad Gobel and Alexis Rorabaugh’s Berkeley sensation, which landed at No. 17 on the Chronicle’s Top 100 Restaurants list this year and is a New York Times pick for one of the country’s best pizzerias — all from an oven that can only fit six pizzas at a time in a 100-square-foot kitchen.
Despite its ascension to national fame, Rose Pizzeria has been hamstrung by its limited space. To maintain quality (and their own sanity, especially in the wake of the New York Times ranking), Gobel and Rorabaugh have reluctantly instituted rules, such as no pizza modifications and limited takeout orders.
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But in San Francisco, with an open kitchen seven times as large and an oven that can bake twice as many pies at once, they’re not just expanding capacity but into some entirely new directions. Diners will even be able to customize a pizza for the first time — albeit the plain cheese pizza, with add-ons like pepperoni or pickled chiles.
Gerad Gobel and Alexis Rorabaugh worked in Chicago before moving to the Bay Area during the pandemic and opening the original Rose Pizzeria in Berkeley in 2021.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Left: The former Village Pizzeria has been transformed, even pulling up tiles to restore the original green-and-white checkered floor hiding underneath.
Right: The new tonda Romana pizza, which features a super thin crust, is only available at Rose in San Francisco.
Photos by Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Above: The former Village Pizzeria has been transformed, even pulling up tiles to restore the original green-and-white checkered floor hiding underneath.
Below: The new tonda Romana pizza, which features a super thin crust, is only available at Rose in San Francisco.
Photos by Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Fans on this side of the Bay Bridge can finally get the pizzas with bold topping combinations and blistered bottoms that Rose is known for, such as burrata with garlic confit and capers, or fennel sausage with spicy goat horn peppers. Gobel and Rorabaugh have dubbed their pizza sensibility, reflective of an ongoing evolution in the Bay Area scene, “West Coast style.”
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They’ve always made the naturally leavened dough with artisan, fresh-milled flour but in San Francisco are adding a new, local flour to the mix: a hard white spring wheat grown and milled by Northern California’s Full Belly Farm.
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With more space in San Francisco, another kind of pizza is only available here: tonda Romana. The uber-thin pizza takes inspiration from Rome, but, Gobel admitted, is really a Trojan horse for selling his favorite style, Chicago tavern pizza, which is similarly thin and crispy. Gobel, an Illinois native, has made tavern pizza for popups at Rose but said it’s had a hard time catching on in the Bay Area. (He and Rorabaugh blame the geometry, thinking that locals don’t quite understand a circular pizza cut into squares.)
The tonda Romana pies span classic — such as basil, tomato, mozzarella, pecorino and oregano — and unconventional, such as the red-sauce Beach Club with pistachio mortadella, pickled jalapeños, and roasted pineapple that’s smeared across the dough like butter. There’s also pasta alla norma in pizza form, topped with thin slices of roasted eggplant, capers, ricotta salata, mint and sweet-and-sour agrodolce. Customers have often asked for a tomato-sauce version of one of Rose’s most popular pies, roasted mushrooms with a cream-based white sauce. Rorabaugh said it becomes soggy, but the combination holds up on the thinner tonda Romana pizza.
New appetizers include beef meatballs made with rosemary and an entire clove of grated nutmeg, as well as Rancho Gordo Royal Corona white beans topped with “tons” of salty grated bottarga, mint, dill and green olives. And the owners are yielding to customer requests for a simple green salad: a mix of rotating lettuces with herbs, shaved pecorino and a mustard vinaigrette. (Rose’s spicy miso Caesar salad is also on the menu.)
Cook Juan Apolinar watches cook Jen Hill as she grates cheese at the new Rose Pizzeria, whose kitchen is seven times larger than the original, which measures just 100 square feet.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Left: Rose Pizzeria’s “West Coast style” pie is getting a slight update at the S.F. location with the addition of a new, local flour from Full Belly farm to the dough mix.
Right: The Rancho Gordo Royal Corona white beans topped with “tons” of salty grated bottarga, mint, dill and green olives is one of a handful of new appetizers, such as a simple green salad.
Photos by Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Above: Rose Pizzeria’s “West Coast style” pie is getting a slight update at the S.F. location with the addition of a new, local flour from Full Belly farm to the dough mix.
Below: The Rancho Gordo Royal Corona white beans topped with “tons” of salty grated bottarga, mint, dill and green olives is one of a handful of new appetizers, such as a simple green salad.
Photos by Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
San Francisco also gets more desserts than ever before, including housemade gelato scoops and sundaes, a slightly salty cheesecake made with buffalo ricotta and Rose’s popular tiramisu for two. Rorabaugh and Gobel have been experimenting with gelato flavors, including one made with sourdough bread, to be topped with miso caramel. Strawberries from California fruit specialist Fruitqueen are going into a tangy gelato made with sheep’s milk feta for an “adult” sundae topped with a pour of vermouth and a crisp tuile cookie.
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The drinks menu will continue Rose’s focus on low-intervention wines from Italy and California, plus, for the first time, wines and spritzes on tap. Customers will be able to peruse — and purchase — bottles in a green-walled wine room tucked into the back of the dining room.
The Clement Street space, formerly Village Pizzeria, has been transformed. Workers pulled up the tiles and restored the original green-and-white checkered floor hiding underneath. Most of the walls have been painted green, and one back panel is covered in pastoral wallpaper depicting the Aventine Hill in Rome. The 44-seat dining room is set with marble-topped tables and a swirled green marble counter looking into the open kitchen. There’s room for about 15 outdoor seats on the sidewalk along Arguello Boulevard. The restaurant will be open daily for lunch and dinner, and sits directly in front of the popular Sunday Clement Street Farmers Market.
Gobel and Rorabaugh worked at Soho House in Chicago before launching an Italian restaurant in a food hall. They moved to the Bay Area after the pandemic hit and in 2021, opened Rose Pizzeria on University Avenue. They’ve said yes to new opportunities as they’ve presented themselves: In October, they added Cafe Brusco, a café and bagel shop down the street, in October, and are also creating a non-pizza menu for Downtime, a forthcoming nightclub and restaurant in San Francisco from the owners of natural wine hit Bar Part Time.
For nearly two years, Gobel and Rorabaugh drove by the prominent Clement Street corner space and made unreturned calls to leasing agents. Finally, last year, a new agent called them back, and they signed a 20-year lease. It’s a meaningful expansion for the couple, who met working at Bar Agricole in San Francisco 16 years ago.
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Rose Pizzeria owners Gobel and Rorabaugh spent nearly two years calling real estate agents to express interest in the corner space at 1 Clement St. They now have a 20-year-lease.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
“Not that many people get a chance to open in San Francisco. We’re really just gonna go for it,” Rorabaugh said.
Their next project? Remodeling the original Rose Pizzeria that started it all.
Dining and Cooking