Perched atop a towering hill in North Beach, Tommaso’s Ristorante Italiano is, in many ways, preserved in amber. The cream-colored wooden booths are flanked with 88-year-old murals depicting the Amalfi Coast. They were painted by an anonymous artist who, according to owner Agostino Crotti, was paid in spaghetti.
The menu is almost identical to how it was in 1935, though the Crotti family has added items like arugula, Agostino said, “to try to be trendy.” He suggested that the wood-fired brick pizza oven—the first in North Beach—inspired Alice Waters to build one of her own at Chez Panisse.
