When the opportunity arose to take over the former Rose Pistola, a classic Italian restaurant that closed in 2017 after nearly 21 years, Flour + Water co-owners Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow jumped at the chance.

“Rose Pistola is a super iconic restaurant from the late ’90s and early 2000s that truly paved the way for restaurants like Flour + Water,” said McNaughton. “And the space has been vacant for almost six years. … [The landlords] reached out literally at the perfect time when we were searching for a place to relocate the pizzeria.”

(Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE)
(Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE)

But it wasn’t just the neighborhood and the history of Rose Pistola that drew them there. The new pizzeria also has two entrances, which allows them to run a full service restaurant out of the front and a quick-service pizza shop out of the back. 

The main dining room of the 4,000-square-foot restaurant is elegant and bright, with higher ceilings than Rose Pistola’s but with the same cheery  mosaic tile of orange, yellow, gray, white and black. In the remodel, they also built a glassed-in “Dough Room,” which allows customers to peer in at the dough-making process (similar to the one behind the restaurant at Flour + Water in the Mission). At night, the space will be used as a private dining room for intimate pizza gatherings. 

Fans of the original Flour + Water Pizzeria might recognize some items on the menu, but McNaughton and Pollnow say they’ve revamped everything — even the pizza dough. They’ve been tweaking it constantly in search of a dough that will hold up well in the to-go arena as well. 

“The dough ends up being a four-day process,” Pollnow said. “And so that slow fermentation gets us both performance benefits with oven spring and how it rises when it goes in, but also just like in sourdough bread, there’s a little bit of a tang to it.”

The menu features five white pies, from a cheesy cacio e pepe pizza to a vibrant green pesto, and even a bone marrow pizza with mozzarella and horseradish. There’s also five red pies, including a classic pepperoni, a smoky eggplant, and a pizza with pineapple, capicola (a type of salumi) and chili crisp. 

One of their secrets to creating the perfect pie is starting with a preliminary layer of fresh cheese directly on the dough, then adding sauce, more cheese and toppings from there. 

This way, “the sauce isn’t sogging out the dough itself,” Pollnow said. “Also, it retains a ton of heat and seasoning.”

Non-pizza items include crispy mozzarella sticks with marinara, as any good pizzeria should have, as well as scampi-inspired head-on shrimp glazed in garlic butter, which Pollnow calls their answer to chicken wings. 

Most of the other starters are on the lighter side, from a stone fruit and fennel dish to heirloom tomatoes served with salsa verde, garlic breadcrumbs and aioli. And for dessert, there’s Double 8 Dairy buffalo gelato soft serve.

To drink, there’s an Italian-focused wine menu as well as a cocktail menu consulted on by Elmer Mejicanos of Red Window and Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. Cocktails range from familiar (a house negroni) to a little more out-there (the “pesto,” made with vodka, hazelnut, basil, lime, cucumber and seltzer). 

For both the cocktail menu and the food, the goal was to keep things accessible, even with the more chef-y items. 

“The only parameter that we have for the menu here — it doesn’t matter if it’s non-pizza, pizza, cocktails — is like, is it craveable?” McNaughton said. “It shouldn’t be overthought. It’s like, when would you just crush that, you know?”

That ethos especially comes into play at the Flour + Water Pizza Shop, the quick service portion of the restaurant. The walk-in and takeout-focused shop features much of the same menu, just with a more casual vibe: QR code ordering, grab-and-go beer and wine, and a vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game to play while you wait for your food. 

The Pizza Shop also offers boozy slushies and a rotating “Big Slice” of the day — a 13-inch pizza folded in half and stuffed with arugula or marinara, “so you can walk down the street and eat it,” McNaughton said.

The plan, eventually, is to expand Flour + Water Pizza Shops across the Bay Area, with the Dough Room acting as a commissary for dough production. The co-chefs couldn’t say definitively where the first new shop will open just yet, but expect to announce it in the next few months. 

As Flour + Water Pizzeria prepared for its grand opening on Wednesday, Pollnow and McNaughton called it a chaotic but also exciting time. They said they’re thrilled to be surrounded by other pizza-making colleagues in North Beach, from Tony’s Pizza Napoletana to Golden Boy Pizza, and ready to introduce their highly acclaimed food to a new audience.

(Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE)
(Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE)

“We want it to be a pizza party every night,” Pollnow said. “Good times, you know, loud music, boisterous guests. No one goes to a pizzeria looking to have a bad time.”

Flour + Water Pizzeria, 532 Columbus Ave., and Flour + Water Pizza Shop, 1533 Stockton St., San Francisco, open June 28. Opening hours are 5 to 10 p.m. daily, but are expected to expand to 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily starting in mid-July.