Somewhere between the people searching for the best deep dish pizza in Chicago and the people who only eat Neapolitan, there is a quieter category that San Francisco is unusually good at and unusually bad at explaining: the square. Sicilian, grandma, focaccia al taglio and Detroit-style all arrive as rectangles, all get called the same thing by menus and reviewers, and are in fact four separate recipes with different doughs, different pans and different reasons to exist. This is a glossary first and a list second, because in this city the hardest part is not finding a good square — it's working out which square you were actually looking for, then getting to the counter before it shuts.
The best square in San Francisco is only sold on Thursdays, and the most famous one has no seats and stops selling earlier than anyone expects. Tell Karpo what day you're free and it'll tell you which counter is worth crossing town for that night.
The glossary, in thirty seconds
Sicilian in the American sense means sfincione's descendant: a thick, high-hydration dough proofed in an oiled sheet pan, fried crisp on the bottom by the oil, with an open, spongy crumb and toppings that sit heavy on the surface. Grandma is its flatter cousin — a thinner rectangle pressed straight into an oiled pan with much less proofing time, crisper all the way through, usually finished with dollops of sauce and a scatter of cheese rather than an even blanket. Focaccia al taglio is a Roman idea, sold by weight, cut with shears, and closer to bread than pizza. Detroit-style is the outlier: a shallower rectangular pan, brick cheese pushed all the way to the metal so it fries into a hard caramelised rim, sauce ladled over the top after the bake. If you want the puffy, olive-oil-slicked one, ask for Sicilian. If you want crisp and thin with a chewy edge, ask for grandma. They are not interchangeable, and most San Francisco menus won't tell you which one you're getting.
The Sicilian: a counter with no chairs
Golden Boy Pizza has been selling square Sicilian focaccia-style slices since 1978, and the thing nobody warns first-timers about is that there is nowhere to sit. All three locations operate takeout only — phone ahead, order in person, or order for delivery. The original is at 542 Green St. in North Beach; there is a Sunset counter at 1447 Taraval St. and a San Mateo one at 1119 N Amphlett Blvd. The slice is thick, oily in the correct way, and famously good with the clam and garlic topping if it's on. Second thing nobody warns you about: despite its reputation as a post-bar institution, Golden Boy closes at 9 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The bars go until 2. Plan accordingly, and stop treating it as a late-night option because a 2014 listicle said so.
The grandma: hiding inside a twelve-style menu
Tony's Pizza Napoletana at 1570 Stockton St. is the one kitchen in San Francisco where you can order a Sicilian and a grandma at the same table and taste the difference in a single sitting. Its menu declares twelve styles — Neapolitan, classic American and Italian, California, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, New Haven, Sicilian, Grandma, Romana and gluten-free — and the reason that isn't marketing is the seven separate ovens behind the pass, held at different temperatures because a Neapolitan pie and a sheet-pan grandma cannot be baked in the same box. Tony Gemignani took the World Pizza Cup title in Naples in 2007, the first American to do it. Hours are noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon to 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday, quoted as last seating. Critically, Tony's takes no reservations at all — it runs a day-of waitlist through Yelp. Join it early, then walk North Beach until your table pings.
The Detroit square with a one-day window
Long Bridge Pizza Co., 2347 3rd St. in Dogpatch, is mostly a sourdough thin-crust shop — open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Mondays — and the Detroit-style squares, baked with a mozzarella and cheddar blend that crisps into the pan edges, run on Thursdays only. Sandwiches are a Wednesday thing. That single-day cadence makes it the most genuinely hidden square in the city: you cannot stumble into it, you have to want it on the right weekday. Practical note from their own ordering page — delivery orders can't be placed over the phone, only online through their Toast storefront, so don't ring and expect a driver.
The everyday square, and the one that comes with a brewery
If the Thursday window doesn't line up, Square Pie Guys at 1077 Mission St. in SoMa is the reliable Detroit-style default, open 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It started as a pop-up and has grown past six Bay Area locations, adding Campbell in August 2025 and Walnut Creek in January 2026, but SoMa remains the original room. For a square with a serious beer program attached, Cellarmaker House of Pizza at 3193 Mission St. runs 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Sunday and noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday — with the caveat that the kitchen stops thirty minutes before the room closes. Reservations go through Toast; walk-ins are welcome during service.
Two corrections before you trust an older list
Del Popolo at 855 Bush St. closed permanently on May 8, 2026 after ten years, and now exists as a frozen retail pizza line carried by supermarkets rather than a restaurant you can walk into — yet it still tops a great many San Francisco pizza roundups. And Little Star's original Divisadero location, another perennial recommendation, closed at the end of 2023 after nineteen years; the San Francisco room that survives is Little Star Valencia at 400 Valencia St., open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Neither is a square, but both are reliable signals: if a guide still lists them as open, it hasn't been re-reported in over a year, and its square recommendations deserve the same suspicion.
Cellarmaker is a brewery first and North Beach makes a nightcap very easy to find. If you're drinking alongside the squares, drink responsibly and arrange your ride home in advance.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #BestDeepDishPizzaInChicago #SicilianPizza #GrandmaSlice #GoldenBoyPizza #TonysPizzaNapoletana #LongBridgePizza #NorthBeach #Dogpatch #HiddenGems
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Ask Karpo first
Square pizza is uniquely badly documented. A Thursday-only special quietly moves to Friday, a takeout counter pulls its closing time in by an hour over winter, a shop that used to sell whole pans switches to slices, and none of it reaches the listicles ranking on your search. Every detail here was pulled from the businesses' own pages rather than aggregators, and some of it will still drift within months. Karpo lives in iMessage, checks the current state of a place before answering, and will happily tell you that tonight is the wrong night for the square you want. Ask it before you cross the city for a slice, and save the trip for a day the pan is actually going in.
