Casey's Pizza Mission Bay

Well, what walk down food memory lane with the SO would be complete without some pizza! And, of course, this won’t be the last one either since it was one of their fave food groups. This time out we are hitting up Casey’s Pizza in Mission Bay. They’ve gone from just a food truck to this small stretch of Fourth Street in Mission Bay that seems to be turning itself into a little walking type of food hood with House of Tadu, Reveille, Gus’s new food market and of course Spark Social SF.

Casey’s has been serving it up for a number of years now with their food truck you can usually find down around 1st and Spear Streets during the week. Seems business was quite brisk enough they decided to entertain the idea of opening an actual restaurant in this ever changing climate of SF where places to eat come and go with a frequency bordering on manic. Fourth is like a new neighborhood in the making as the apartment buildings pop up like weeds in the area that seems to have more cranes than the marsh lands. Since they serve pizza it was super easy to persuade the SO to try them out. Plus, they’d been open for a number of months now which I felt gave them time to work out any kinks and lessen the crowds all searching for the new, new, now.

It is a small space with a small tables running along the window and an L-shaped bar looking into an open kitchen where you can pretty much see the action from most any spot in the restaurant. It is one of those fast casual places where you just order at the register then seat yourself at a table. Since it was mostly just us on our visit they had us belly up to the bar where we could peruse the menu and just order where we sat.

Right off my eye goes straight to anything with bacon but it also had kale and I wasn’t quite in that kind of mood and we agreed to start with something called Popeye.

It’s roasted spinach, red onion, mozzarella, goat cheese and balsamic. But since I could not totally give up the Zoe’s bacon (it’s a thing), I took the $3 upcharge and asked them to added. Each pie is made to order and cooked in an oven with a firebrick hearth. Not wood fired but more old school NY. They are essentially Neopolitan style thin-ish crust where they sort of look at it to judge doneness. As you can see, the first one came out pretty decent, though the toppings could have been a little more evenly distributed, just saying. It does come piping hot from oven to table so keep that in mind before taking your first bite because you don’t want to burn the roof of your mouth which will then ruin the entire eating process for you. That is speaking from experience and not necessarily this hot pie.

In general first bite terms, it is pleasant and cheesy first bite of pizza, always a plus. You do get the hearty roasted taste of the spinach, the richness of the bacon, sweetness of onion and the goat cheese adds just a hint of sharpness to bring it all together. The goat cheese is made into more of light white cream sauce with is barely spread on the pie, something I kind of like as an alternative to your standard red sauce. While it normally comes without the bacon, I think I liked it better with as a compliment to all the cheese. But for you vegetarians out there, feel free to have without, it is still good.

Now because it is thin crust and the toppings are pretty plentiful, it can suffer some from what I call soggy tip syndrome, something you are just seemingly gonna find with thin crusts like this. Though the further up you eat the better it holds together and more crunch of the bread you get right up to the crust which isn’t too thick and bubbles up with air pockets like a good Neo-dough should.

Each pizza is roughly 6 big slices and being the eaters we were, there seemed to be a need for a second pie and this choice was on the SO who opted for Zoe pepperoni.

It’s a red sauced pizza with Zoe’s artisan pepperoni (still a thing), mozzarella, grana padano, and basil. As you can see the cook by looking thing went a tad wonky here and parts of the crust were a little on the too done. I know there folks out there who like the burnt/blackened kind of thing on their crust, I’m just not one of them. While there are plenty of pepperoni on the pie, you can see they have an issue with distribution again. Fortunately we could separate them and move them around to offer up a pepperoni in every bite thing. Beyond the burnt crust bits and again with the somewhat soggy tip, which seemed less here, it was still a tasty pizza. One thing I will also give props to, they didn’t skimp on the cheese on either pizza which will always get high marks from me. This one was suitably gooey and greasy like a straight up pepperoni pizza slice you crave after a night out drinking. What could be better than that?!! And yes we were drinking.

They have an ever changing selection of wines and beers listed on the giant black chalkboard by the door as you come in so check it out. We just happened to pop in on a day when they actually had a decent reisling to serve up. Not too sweet and not dry. It was in the right mid range for both of us. Though I might have been happier with a tad better pour, but wine isn’t like beer and pours are always different at every restaurant. Still, it was a lovely mesh with the saltiness of all the cheese and meat.

Burnt crust notwithstanding, we both actually liked Casey’s variation on a Neopolitan pizza. And while their prices might seem high for pizza, when look at other places like Delfina, Little Star, Del Popolo, etc., they are pretty in line with size and prices. And the pizza is pretty worthwhile too. Since our visit, Casey’s is still chugging along and I’ve been back a couple times and the pizzas are still consistently good. They seem to be turning into a charming little neighborhood kind of place that the city appears to be losing as local restaurants struggle to survive. While I wouldn’t necessarily say you need to make a special visit over to Mission Bay to chow down, if you do find yourself in the area for a game of baseball or even the new basketball arena kind, they’d be worth a stop in to feed up and fuel up to cheer on your favorite team. Or if you can’t find a food truck at Spark Social SF you want to eat at they are an enjoyable alternative. Hopefully they will be able to continue to add to new emerging Fourth Street food corridor. We’ve got our slices crossed.