Ice Cream in the Gastro, Webisode #3

In this segment, Pizzeria Delfina’s head pizzaiolo, Anthony Strong, takes me on a short walking tour of the one block section of San Francisco’s Mission District known as The Gastro. We explore the Bi-Rite Market where we eat gourmet chocolate and devour the lightest, flakiest pork rinds (chicharones) I’ve ever had And then we go across the street to visit with owner Ann Walker at the Bi-Rite Creamery for some truly amazing ice cream, including their famous salted caramel. This flavor is now becoming somewhat standard in fancy ice cream parlors and on restaurant menus, but it all started here, in The Gastro. My two favorite shots in this websiode are of Anthony and me walking up 18th St. (The Gastro is on 18th St., between Guerrero and Valencia Streets), munching on pork rinds with me saying, “If I lived here I’d be eating these everyday and I’d be dead”; and the other is of me, in our Pizza Quest van (we’re still working on getting the “Bus”) finishing off a pint of salted caramel ice cream moaning that “…it’s not fair,” by which I meant that it’s not fair that I can’t eat it everyday for the same reason as the pork rinds–I’d be dead. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff you could die for.

We still have another section of the Gastro to share with you from the Guerrero St. end of the block–one of my all time favorite bakery cafes, Tartine, where we will see one of the greatest loaves of bread in the world (IMHO), and then have a pizza made on that same dough in a home oven. In our next Delfina segment we will be visiting with Anthony Strong again, along with Delfina owner and Executive Chef Craig Stoll, for a lesson in hand pulling mozzarella cheese. But all that is still to come. For now, enjoy The Gastro….