North Beach Clam Chowder Lunch Picker for a Boston Native

Colleen moved from Dorchester three winters ago and still talks about chowder the way some people talk about their hometown team. It should be thick, it should taste of the sea, and it should never, ever contain a tomato. Her coworker Gianna, whose grandparents ran a grocery near Washington Square, took that as a dare. One Friday they walked down from the office to North Beach to settle it over lunch.

Gianna's argument started with history. North Beach was the home of the Italian fishermen who sailed the bay in small lateen-rigged boats, and the stew they made from whatever was left at the end of the day became cioppino, a tomato and wine broth crowded with crab, clams, mussels and fish. It is San Francisco's own seafood bowl, born a few streets from where the two of them were standing.

Colleen countered that chowder was the original working-harbour soup, a Massachusetts staple long before anyone in California simmered a crab. Both of them were right, which is exactly why North Beach makes such a good place to compare. Many of the Italian cafes and old seafood rooms here serve a creamy clam chowder for out-of-towners and a cioppino for anyone who asks, so a single table can hold the whole debate.

The fair way to do it is a cup of each, plus sourdough to dip. A cup of chowder is enough to judge texture and seasoning, and cioppino is often big enough to share between two people with a spare plate for the shells. Ask for extra napkins before you start. Cracking crab legs in a red broth is happy, messy work, and a wool coat is not the ideal place to learn that.

Colleen judged on three things: thickness, clam flavour and pepper. Gianna judged on broth, freshness of the shellfish and how good the bread was at the bottom of the bowl. They scored on a paper napkin with a pen borrowed from the waiter. Writing a small scorecard like this sounds silly, but it keeps the conversation going and stops one loud opinion from taking over the table.

North Beach dining rooms tend to be small, narrow and full of photos of family members, boxers, opera singers and old bay boats. Lunch is usually more relaxed than dinner, which makes it the easier time to linger. Take a table near the window if you like to watch the street, or toward the back if you want the conversation to stay private while you argue about soup.

Do not rush the end of the meal. In this neighbourhood, lunch tends to close with an espresso, sometimes a cannoli or a slice of something with ricotta. Colleen, who expected a fast soup and back to the desk, admitted that the slower rhythm was half the pleasure. A Friday lunch that stretches to ninety minutes is a very North Beach way to spend an afternoon. If you only have half an hour, say so when you sit down, and order the soups right away so the kitchen can pace things for you.

The chowder won on comfort. It was thick, creamy and generous with clams, close enough to home that Colleen went quiet for a moment. The cioppino won on drama, with crab claws, a deep red broth, and the smell of garlic and white wine that made the neighbouring table look over. Gianna claimed victory on the grounds that nobody on the East Coast had invented anything that colourful.

They declared a draw and made a rule: whoever has the worse week picks the bowl next Friday. If you are planning a similar lunch, the comparison works for groups too. Order one chowder and one cioppino per pair, pass the bowls halfway through and let the table vote. It is far more fun than everybody ordering the same thing and talking about work the whole time. Two bowls, two spoons each and a spare plate are all the equipment a good lunchtime debate requires.

After a heavy lunch, North Beach hands you a hill. Telegraph Hill rises right behind the neighbourhood, and the walk up past little houses and terraced gardens is steep but short. Coming down the other side, the wooden garden stairways wind between cottages and wild green patches where, if you are lucky, you will hear the famous wild parrots that have lived on the hill for years.

On the flatter side, Washington Square is a pleasant lawn for a sit, with the twin white spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church rising over it. In the mornings you may see older locals practising tai chi on the grass, a reminder that North Beach and Chinatown blend into each other here. It is an easy place to digest, people-watch and keep arguing about tomatoes.

Colleen asked why the street names and alleys felt so literary, and Gianna walked her past City Lights, the Beat-era literary landmark where Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg's circle shaped a generation of poets. The alley beside it is named after Jack Kerouac and is lined with murals and painted quotes. Just across the way, old bars and cafes still keep the Beat atmosphere alive in their dark wood and walls of photographs.

If you have more time, the walk continues down toward the waterfront along streets of Italian delis and bakeries, a nice way to pick up something to take home for later. Many shops here wrap focaccia or biscotti in paper. Colleen bought a sack of anise cookies for her mother back in Massachusetts and called it peace offering number one in the chowder war.

For their next round, Gianna asked the Karpo APP to suggest North Beach rooms where both a clam chowder and a cioppino would likely be on offer at lunch, plus a cafe nearby for the espresso afterwards. Karpo returned a short set of options with a sentence on the feel of each place, which was enough to choose without reading a hundred reviews.

That is the useful way to plan a lunch like this. Tell Karpo who is coming, what kind of argument you want to have, and how long you have, then let it narrow the choices. Pick the room, order the two bowls, walk the hill afterward and decide the winner at the top. Colleen says she is still undefeated. Gianna says the scorecard napkin says otherwise.