A visit to San Francisco’s Consulate General of Italy typically begins with talk of not dinner but dessert — specifically, zabiaone. That’s because the friendly Labrador that belongs to Consul General Lorenzo Ortona and his wife, the journalist Sheila Pierce Ortona, is named for the dessert of the same deep golden color. They call her Zaba for short, and on a recent after-noon, she was sporting a blue-and-yellow Golden State Warriors collar featuring the City skyline.

The influence of the Italian American community in San Francisco can hardly be over-stated. And this cosmopolitan couple — he’s Italian, she’s American — are uniquely suited to the task of connecting the City’s Gold Rush era Italian heritage with a younger generation arriving to try to strike gold in Silicon Valley.