Yes, you now need a reservation for pepperoni pizza

This column originally ran in the Off Menu newsletter, where you’ll find restaurant news, gossip, tips, and hot takes every week. To sign up, visit the Standard’s newsletter page and select Off Menu.

“Reservations are so embarrassing … Like, Hi! I’m here for my spaghetti appointment!” 

Lauren sent me a TikTok with the above quote the other day. It makes us both laugh and speaks to how I feel about San Francisco right now. Just replace “spaghetti” with “pizza” — pizza being emblematic of a food that used to be considered far too casual to calendar.

Circa 2020, we would never have texted the group chat: Hey, you guys want to get a pepperoni next month?

If it feels like you can’t get something as simple as a slice without booking in advance, it would be easy to blame the hot-as-a-Calabrian-chile Jules Pizza. But it’s not chef Max Blachman-Gentile’s fault for being so popular that the pop-up turned Lower Haight brick-and-mortar restaurant, which opened in May, started booking tables 30 days in advance, like it’s The French Laundry or something. 

File it under the endless pile of “the pandemic made us do it” stories, but this turn to formality — or maybe a fear of spontaneity — continues to prevail. When diners resurfaced blinking out of the interiority of Covid, they demanded the convenience of not waiting for tables, and restaurants bent over backward to accommodate their lost customer bases.

Even pizza places that had always been walk-in bowed to the pressure and now take reservations, including Del Popolo, Flour + Water Pizzeria, Gialina, and DamnFine. (There are still a few no-rez hold-outs, including Pizzetta 211, PizzaHacker, and Tony’s Pizza Napoletana.)

When Pizzeria Delfina, arguably the city’s first “artisanal” sit-down pizzeria, opened on Valencia Street in 2005, it wouldn’t have been caught dead on OpenTable. Today, every one of its three locations relies on a hybrid of reservations and walk-ins.

Co-owner Annie Stoll recalls the old days when people gathered on the sidewalk, drinking wine while they waited: “It was fun and part of the vibe. Like, ‘How’re you doing? Put your name on the board, let’s get you a drink!’ But with a reservation, it’s more like, ‘Right this way.’” 

Though Blachman-Gentile himself likes to walk into restaurants and sit at the bar, he made the decision to allow reservations partly to “keep the kitchen from being bombarded” and keep customers from having to endure long waits. It also helps him plan how much dough to make. However, there are a few seats left for walk-ins at Jules: four at the bar and eight at the communal table. But good luck with that. On a recent Friday night, I boldly stopped by but was told it would be a three-hour wait. 

The only other way in, besides logging onto Resy and booking 30 days in advance, is knowing somebody. It helps if you’re a blood relative. Like the one who gave birth to you — and thus, your pizza.

“My mom was complaining about the reservation site crashing,” laughs Blachman-Gentile. “I told her, it’s not that the site crashed. It’s just that it gets booked that fast. But just text me, and I’ll get you a table.”