Like any college town, Palo Alto is a mecca for restaurants of every stripe. The dining scene is nothing here if not elastic, borne out by the recent renovation of Pizzeria Delfina Palo Alto and the recent opening of Horsefeather.
Pizzeria Delfina Palo Alto, a fixture on Emerson Street in Palo Alto since 2015 when it replaced the Empire Tap Room, underwent a renovation led by architect Sarah Fucinaro with construction by Cookline just in time for summer dining. Highlights include a new to-go window to simplify takeout and an expanded and upgraded bar, with seating by the pizza oven for those who like it hot.
Bright and energetic, the new refresh sports penny tile with blue grout, terrazzo floors from Concrete Collaborative and custom wood bar fronts with zinc tops. Subtle arches echo the iconic Arch Room at the flagship Pizzeria Delfina on 18th Street in San Francisco.
The food menu contains perennial fan favorites, including GM Andrew Maloney’s favorite, pepperoni pie. Seasonal specials are constantly being added based on that season’s produce. Most exciting is that PD, as it’s fondly referred to internally, holds monthly pig roasts, which are quite the feast. For reservations, visit https://www.pizzeriadelfina.com.
Outside at Pizzeria Delfina you’ll find plentiful seating under an awning in a garden-like atmosphere. We found it a most pleasant respite on a warm July day. Our repast included a stellar Tre Colore salad, with stripes of red (traviso), white (Belgian endive) and green (arugula) representing the Italian flag. It was presented on a long narrow plate, bedecked with long thin shavings of parmesan. The lemon dressing was exquisite.
We also ordered the leeks with crisp capers, eggplant parmigiana and a carbonara pizza with guanciole, green onion, fontina and two eggs. My preference went to the pie for the chewy crust, the bacon and egg flavor and the pop of green onion that cut through the fontina, but the eggplant parm was excellent.
The crusty secret is in the grains PD uses for their proprietary flour. The blend of hard red spring wheat and soft white wheat, both grown in North America and certified organic, is called Farivita, a blending of two Italian words. “Farina” means flour, and “vita” means life, so Farivita roughly translates to “flour of life.”
This pizza had enough give to fold easily, yet offered a delightful snap to the outer crust, which isn’t easy to achieve. This might explain why they serve nearly 2,000 pizzas weekly at this location alone. You can also find frozen Pizzeria Delfina pies at Bi-Rite Markets, Mollie Stone’s Markets, Lunardi’s, Draegers, Gus’s Markets, Mill Valley Market, Luke’s Local and Woodlands Markets. Good Eggs will deliver them to your home, and they ship nationwide through Goldbelly.
Whimsical meets eclectic at Horsefeather
Horsefeather just opened its much-anticipated Palo Alto location in the Town and Country shopping center across from Stanford University. Tucked behind Trader Joes, it’s ideally positioned to serve the needs of the student and faculty population looking for a hearty meal, as well as locals looking for a new and radically different menu. The welcoming environment, which was laid out using VR technology, serves some of the best cocktails and mocktails around.
Horsefeather began in San Francisco 2016 as a project by co-owners Hanson Li, Justin Lew and Tiffany Yam and was immediately heralded for its innovative cocktails and food program, including duck fat fries and fried chicken with kimchi. Li is a Stanford alum and owns several other businesses with Yam, including Humphry Slocombe (ice cream) and San Francisco-based Lazy Susan and Last Rites (of which Lew is also a co-owner).
The whimsical name fits the approach to the menu, which differs from the San Francisco flagship. Here in Palo Alto, Chef Johanna Frégoso Ruiz serves up starters like Korean crispy wings with house ranch and deviled eggs with crispy leeks and kimchi, plus roasted cauliflower with Calabrian chili.
Entrées currently run the gamut, including a cream sherry-braised beef roast with Yukon mash, a risotto Milanese topped with hen of the wood mushrooms, a ceviche made with plant-based tuna, and miso linguini made with dashi, spinach, parm, wild mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and crispy nori.
This isn’t a place where we saw many people ordering salads, but they do offer beet and strawberries with arugula and spicy chevre, a seared tuna salad with jasmine rice and preserved lemon, and chopped romaine with charred stone fruit, puffed quinoa and pickled shallots. There’s also a double cheeseburger made with chuck and brisket and American cheese.
My dining companion and I went completely off our usual script, and after indulging in the umami seasoned duck fries—which could have fed four—we ordered fried chicken, a formidable pile of crispy battered boneless thighs doused with siracha honey and accompanied by velvety mac and cheese, hearty corn esquites and cilantro coleslaw. This is one massive dish, and to my astonishment, many folks were cleaning their plates.
The jumbo prawn tacos were also a hit, sauteed with turmeric and cayenne, covered with melted havarti, salsa verde and pickled onions, and served in hearty house-made corn tortillas. We swore we didn’t have room for dessert, but somehow managed to polish off a whiskey butter cake with brown butter, shiro miso, coconut milk and grilled pineapple marmalade, topped with a pillowy, whipped fluffernutter-like vanilla bean cream.
We were quite impressed by the artfully composed and presented mocktails, which are a cut above most we’ve tried. Rather than attempt to re-create the flavor of a particular known cocktail, the bartender here makes drinks that tastes good and that you actually want to drink. I actually finished my Dr. Feel Good, a combination of Lucano zero proof Amaro bitter, Floreal apéritif, Pathfinder Amaro (made from hemp and distilled in copper pots), peach bitters and smoked orange oil. Our waiter said it was close to a Negroni in flavor, and he was spot on. The slushy R.H.C. combined a zero proof Amaro with HF Cola cordial, and was served in a fancy Collins glass, decorated with mint and dehydrated lime. That cola flavor brought us right back to the soda fountains of youth.
Lunch and dinner are served daily, along with brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. Currently, all the seating is indoors, but affable and dynamic general manager Dzu Nguyen said there are plans to add outdoor dining in the next few months, which will make this place even more of a culinary destination. For reservations, visit https://horsefeather.com/hfpa/book.
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