Restaurant Review : Cable Car Pizza in San Francisco, CA

Cable Car Pizza
464 Broadway Ave.
San Francisco, CA
# 415-443-2500

I used to live in the Mission, near the Cable Car Pizza branch there on Valencia Street. It was one of the closest pizza places to my house, and though it wasn't stellar or a fantastic deal pricewise, I thought it was decent enough and priced fairly enough to merit stopping by for a slice or two here and there. In fact, if you want to read more about it, I've reviewed it.

As it happens, I recently moved to North Beach and guess what? One of the other Cable Car Pizza branches is now one of the closest pizza places to where I live. As I was getting acquainted with the neighborhood, I figured I should scope out this location so as to know where all the best pizza values lie when the urge for a slice arises.

Well, I've visited this location once, and I see no reason to ever go back again. This particular Cable Car Pizza is the very definition of "drunk food", easily the most overpriced and disappointing pizza I've had yet in San Francisco.

The first tip-off should have been that they don't list any of their prices anywhere in the store. Savvy neighbors clued me in to the fact that the staff tends to size you up for level of sobriety and potential cash on hand, and then prices their slices accordingly. Apparently they judged me too sober to really rip off, as they asked the same prices that the other location does - $2.50 for a cheese slice and $3.50 for various combinations. As the combos looked loaded with toppings and fairly tasty, I sprang for two of those to go. Well, they put them straight in the box with no trip through the oven, but I don't have a problem with that as long as they've been under a heat lamp or something and kept reasonably warm, I can always nuke them to taste later. What I failed to notice while in the store, unfortunately, was that they don't have any heat lamps at all at this location! Yeah, apparently they just cook the pies and then sit them out on the counter and let them get ice cold. Which was what mine was, as I discovered when I got back to my new place. My new place which, by the way, I had yet to move my microwave into. So, $7 for two slices of cold pizza. Yum.