Search pizza near me anywhere in San Francisco and North Beach will dominate the results, which for once is fair. Four of the city's most significant pizza addresses sit within a few minutes' walk of each other here, around the diagonal of Columbus Avenue and the streets running off Washington Square. What the search results will not tell you is that these four run on four completely different schedules, that one of them is shut two days a week and never opens for lunch, and that the most famous of them does not take a booking at all. The pizza is the easy part; sequencing the evening is where people come unstuck.
Tell Karpo which night you're going and how many of you there are, and it comes back with which of these four are open at that hour, which one to hit first because it closes earliest, and whether you should be joining a waitlist before you leave the house.
Four addresses, under ten minutes of walking
The geography is the appeal. Tony's Pizza Napoletana is at 1570 Stockton Street, on Washington Square. Golden Boy is at 542 Green Street. Il Casaro is at 348 Columbus Avenue. Capo's is at 641 Vallejo Street. You can walk the whole set end to end in under ten minutes, which means the deciding factor is almost never distance — it is opening hours and whether you are prepared to wait. Treat this as one venue with four counters and plan the order accordingly, because the doors close in a specific sequence and the sequence is not the one you would guess.
Tony's Pizza Napoletana: no reservations, ever
This is the detail that matters most and the one most often got wrong. Tony's does not take advance bookings. There is no table to reserve, no window to secure — the restaurant runs a daily waitlist and that is the only route in. Its own site gives the hours as noon to 10pm Monday through Thursday and noon to 11pm Friday through Sunday, and those times are last seating rather than closing, which is a meaningful difference if you were planning to arrive at 9:55pm on a Tuesday. It closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The practical approach is to put your name down as early in the evening as you can and spend the wait somewhere else in the neighborhood — which, given the other three addresses, is not much of a hardship.
Golden Boy: the first door to close
Golden Boy at 542 Green Street has been selling its thick square-cut focaccia-style slices since 1978, and it is the counter-service option in a neighborhood otherwise full of sit-down rooms. It is also the first of the four to shut on a weeknight. Its published hours are 11:30am to 9pm Monday through Thursday, 11:30am to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, and 11:30am to 9pm on Sunday. Note that Sunday reverts to the weeknight close — the late Friday and Saturday extension does not carry over, which catches out people planning the last night of a long weekend. If Golden Boy is on your list at all, do it first.
Capo's: closed two days, and dinner only
Capo's at 641 Vallejo Street is the one that will most reliably ruin a plan made from an old listing. It reopened under a reworked concept that pushes Detroit-style to the front, and it now runs Wednesday through Sunday only — closed Monday and Tuesday — opening at 4:30pm and running to 9:30pm, with a later 11pm close on Friday and Saturday. Two consequences. First, there is no lunch here at all, on any day. Second, a Monday or Tuesday North Beach pizza crawl is a three-stop crawl, not a four-stop one. If you want the Detroit pan on this trip, the day of the week decides it before anything else does.
Il Casaro: the last door, and the mozzarella worth ordering
Il Casaro at 348 Columbus Avenue keeps the longest hours of the four — 11:30am to 11pm Monday through Thursday, 11:30am to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 11:30am to 10pm on Sunday. That midnight close makes it the natural end of the evening, and the only one of these four still serving after the others have locked up. Worth knowing about the mozzarella bar, which is the reason to order beyond pizza: the mozzarella di bufala, fior di latte and burrata are imported from Italy rather than made on site, which is a point in their favour rather than against, but it is frequently misdescribed. One caution — listings disagree about whether the second Il Casaro on Church Street in the Castro is still trading. The restaurant's own site still shows it; other sources mark it closed. Confirm before crossing town for that one.
The order to walk it in
On a weekday, put your name on the Tony's waitlist first, take a slice at Golden Boy while you wait because it closes at nine, eat at Tony's when the table comes up, and finish at Il Casaro, which will still be open. Add Capo's only if it is Wednesday or later and you are starting after half past four. On a Friday or Saturday everything stretches by roughly two hours and the crawl becomes comfortable rather than tight. On a Sunday, be careful: Golden Boy and Il Casaro both pull their closing times back, and Sunday is the night this neighborhood quietly gets earlier while the crowds are still out.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #PizzaNearMe #NorthBeach #SFPizza #TonysPizzaNapoletana #GoldenBoyPizza #IlCasaro #ColumbusAvenue #WashingtonSquare #DetroitStyle #NeapolitanPizza #SFEats #SFFood #PizzaCrawl #SFGuide
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
Want to know which North Beach pizzerias are open on the night you're going, which one to join the waitlist for before you set off, and how to order the walk so nothing shuts in your face? Ask Karpo for current San Francisco pizza hours, the two dark days that reshape this route, and a walking order between Stockton, Green, Columbus and Vallejo before you head out.
