Pizzeria Picco

To me, Larkspur is where the Ferry to the Giants game is after work, so picking a place to have dinner with Ghost and Nana seemed like a challenge. At top of that, we needed to find a dog friendly outdoor patio for Shaddy. Could anywhere in Larkspur fit the bill? The choice was pizzeria picco, a popular pizza joint that was packed on a cool October Saturday night. We waited 45 minutes and listened to Game 1 of the NLCS watching people scarfing down Neapolitan thin crust style pizzas and finishing off with Straus Dairy soft serve with a variety of toppings.
On a cool fall night, we started off with two appetizers, a roasted butternut squash soup with pumpkin seed oil and an organic apple & fennel salad with baby lettuce, black olives, baby fennel, champagne vinaigrette, and goats milk feta. The soup was warm and pretty good, but very one dimensional. We recently had butternut squash soup at point reyes cafe that had layers of flavor but picco's offering was more of a single note. The salad had fresh organic ingredients, a nice light way to prep us for pizza.

roasted butternut squash soup and organic apple & fennel salad 

We ordered three pizzas, although only two are pictured below, the Specialized with Hobbs’ pepperoni, house made sausage,tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. The Surly with hog island clams, tomato sauce, garlic, soppressata, pecorino, parsley, calabrian chile. And the Marin topped with roasted garlic, young organic potato, mozzarella, parmesan and rosemary oil.

Specialized

Maybe I'm learning that I'm just not a big fan of Neapolitan pizzas, although this one was better than what I had at A16. I keep hoping every time I order a pizza with homemade sausages, there's a chance that it'd be like Pizzeria Mozza's. Well, that theory was busted at A16 and busted here. The specialized was a boring, boring, boring pizza, and i only have myself to blame, the least favorite of the three. 

Marin

The Surly was my favorite mainly because it had a spicy kick and the Marin was also good with a good amount of melted mozzarella and strong garlic flavor. Overall, the pizzas were good, not great. Not somewhere I would ever crave for like a cheeseboard or mozza, but had a good time with friends.

We ended the meal with the soft serve that everyone seemed to order, which disappointingly was simply soft serve. There was no discernible difference in the ice cream other than the delectable caramel topping on Chu Toro's order. Mine had the El Ray chocolate shell. All in all, Picco in Larkspur offered us a good meal, a nice atmosphere and friendly environment for Shaddy, a overall win.

Rating 6.5

October 16, 2010

Shaddy Approved