Delizioso! San Diego's Little Italy, Just Like Mama Used To Make

March 26, 2009 at 4:25 PM | by Omri | Comment (1)

Just about every American city has a Little Italy that can trace itself back to the turn of last century, and San Diego is no certainly no different. There's been a stable community of Italians in downtown since the 1920's, at one point numbering over 6,000 families. Because our policymakers are really smart they decided to destroy 35 percent of the neighborhood in the 1960's to make room for the 5 Highway, triggering a decline that lasted thirty solid years.

Starting in the 1990's, though, the neighborhood began bouncing back. Today's Little Italy - revolving around the business-lined India Street - is a combination of pizza joints, high-end restaurants, boutiques, antique shops, bars, and cafes.

Of course there are the requisite pizza joints and ice cream parlors up and down the street. Filippi's Pizza Grotto is a pizza chain with outposts across the Greater San Diego area, but the original India Street location is right where it's been since 1950. Cefalu's Pizza is a hole in the wall kind of place that the Yelpers are sharply divided on. They either serve the best pizza in San Diego or inedible slop. Which is why we don't listen to the Yelpers.

In between the shops and counters, India Street is also home to a bevy of authentic upscale Italian restaurants. These are places were the tablecloths are white, where the waiters are grizzled Italian men with heavy accents, and where the bread is fantastic.

Buon Appetito is half-urban art gallery, half-crowded Italian experience. In between racking up "Best In City" awards, they also find time to feature local San Diego artists on a bi-monthly basis. Everything is fantastic, but make sure that you try the house dressing.

A little up and across the street there's Vincenzo Ristorante Italiano. A few distinguishing features, above and beyond the excellent food and service, make the restaurant particularly intriguing. Like many other Little Italy restaurants it has outdoor seating. But in contrast to most of those restaurants the patio is reserved for small parties. That means no "family outings" slurping spaghetti at the table next to you, which is important for things like "quite dinners," "dates," and "resisting the urge to kill other people's kids."

Locations
Filippi's Pizza Grotto: 1747 India St San Diego, California 92101
Cefalu's Pizz: 1655 India St
Buon Appetito: 1609 India St San Diego, CA 92101
Vincenzo Ristorante Italiano: 1702 India St. San Diego, CA 92101

[Photo: soumit / Flickr]

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