Vega

this was my first time at vega it hurts me to write a review like this because my entrée meal was fabulous, but my experience was lack luster.
i got invited to vega for a birthday dinner. we were one of the first parties to arrive for dinner… the sever did a fine job at accommodating some of our dietary needs, she even double checked with the kitchen a few times and came back to us, but the problem was she just wasn’t friendly at all. kind of a very cool personality? it was perplexing why she wasnt more openly nice and friendly to us, maybe she was having an off night, just not my typical experience eating Italian fare– the bus boy was very friendly. but the service left me feeling disappointed for days. especially given it was a special birthday meal for me… the food was pretty damn good but i couldn’t bring myself to love this place because the server just didnt meet my expectations of being friendly and inviting. for example, while she entertained my questions … she just seemed like she was inconvenienced by our presence. it wasn’t welcoming. like she would answer one question and then disappear, like she decided we weren’t ready to order so she was just going to come back later… uh i had more questions… left me feeling very meh.
when it comes to the food, everything was fresh… arugula salad was delicious and the portion was generous. The swordfish was seriously one of the best things I ate in a very long time, even though it was a little too heavy on the tomatoes for my taste, this is Italian after all. i would give this place another shot for the food but who knows what server you will get.

This place is terrific! They have a great and reasonably priced wine list and tons of delicious food options. FYI, they have half price bottles of wine on Wednesday night. I think vega really shines in two areas… their pastas and their entrees. In particular, their gnocchi with sausage and mushrooms and roasted fish of the day are spectacular. My husband and I nearly always get both dishes and split them. The only thing I’ve had here that was disappointing was a side dish of polenta with cheese on it. It was dry and bland, and they took it back without any fuss. They don’t take reservations but it’s usually not hard to get a table within 10 – 15 minutes. This is definitely a neighborhood gem.

3.5 stars
Cute place with nice ambience and lighting. Definitely run by Italians who take a lot of pride in their food.
Dungeness crab salad — pretty good. Fresh crab but some of the pieces were a bit icy.
Fettuccini with duck ragu sauce — the first bite was much better than the last bite. The portion is huge, enough for 3 people with more to spare. For some reason, the pasta got a lot more worse as it got cooler so definitely eat this one fast!

Love having this restaurant in the neighborhood — it feels warm and intimate, with low lighting and warm reddish colors. They have two «mushrooms and truffle» type pizzas — and our server recommended the pizza al funghi as the better of the two. I don’t know since that’s the only pizza we ordered, but it was fantastic! So was their famous gnocchi bosciola. The octopus carpaccio was certainly exotic but a bit too weird and lemony.
We also had a couple solid glasses of red wine. Would absolutely go back.

This place is great! Great ambience, food and service! Great for date night, friend night or whatnot.
I ordered the pasta with clams, mussels, and calamari. It was delicious! The kind of delicious where you want to keep eating even though youre full. It’s the kind of delicious where you glare at your date for asking if they could try some. You can tell the pasta is home made, there’s just the right amount of sauce, mussels/​clams/​calamari was cooked perfectly.
My date got the rigatoni and he also had similar thoughts that it was delicious and well cooked.
Cons: 1) the bread had kind of tasted funny, a nutty taste to it? Call me American, but I just like sourdough and butter
Everything else was great! Definitely coming back again!

We have been going to this restaurant for 4 years! Everything about this place is fantastic!
I don’t have many favorite restaurants as these days food can be about the same anywhere! Not here!
The atmosphere, the music, the staff — All incredible!
The food is so amazing. The gnocchi is truly the best I’ve ever had.
The wine list is superb!
You can’t go wrong at Vega. It’s really a slice of heaven in your mouth!

Best casual Italian restaurant in SF for me!
I’ve loved everything here — the pastas and the pizza. We’ve tried a soup, gnocchi, couple of pasta dishes (rigatoni being the standout) and pizzas and all of them were very good.

Finally, a true neighborhood restaurant!
Went there with my family (5 of us) and we all liked what we ordered. Service was excellent, too: prompt and courteous.
Things we liked best: the octopus carpaccio and the orecchiette con cime di rapa (orecchiette pasta with broccoli rabe), the latter probably the best I’ve ever had!
Portions are very generous, I had enough leftovers for lunch the following day.
What I liked besides the food is the feeling of un-​pretentiousness: they serve very good food at a honest price and make you feel welcome. They have a glass of house Syrah for $ 5 which I think is terrific value.
I wish I lived closer to it, but I’ll definitely go back again.

I can’t get enough of this restaurant’s crab Cappellini. I also like their warm bread and olive oil with balsamic vinegar. The chef and staff tolerate me and my substitution of the red sauce with cream sauce everytime I come here. That means a lot to me. I am way more enamored of it that way with seafood. My boyfriend LOVED their Cioppino which there are so many BAD Cioppinos out there to be tasted. It is hands down the best! A glass of Fahlanghina and a tiramisu for dessert and that is a good night!

This is the deal, they do lots of things I «like,» and they do a few things I «love.» As we all know, taste is subjective. There is, however, one item on their menu that is truly «anointed,» their Mushroom Pizza — aka «Pizza Al Funghi con olio Di Tartufo.»

Take someone special here. It’s a cute Italian restaurant in Bernal Heights that you can easily miss. In fact, we walked by Vega, the second time, and didn’t even realize it. It’s small and intimate with maybe 20 seats.
Food is delectable. My favorites are the wanted artichoke hearts, calamari, and the house gnocchi with Italian sausage. Their wine list is pretty substantial. Mostly wines from across Italy.
The service is outstanding. Everyone is knowledgable about the food and is quick.
Make reservations.

You just cannot do any better than this place. I saw this place on Check Please and have bookmarked it for the last 2 years. This is quite the hidden gem.
Always go for the artichoke hearts and their famous gnocchi with sausage. Service is beyond amazing and fast plus efficient. Wine list is speculator and affordable; especially if you go on half priced wine nights ;)
Have the most romantic date here and just sit and enjoy the enchantment.

Unilocal’s reservation system made scheduling dinner for 5 people very convenient and simple. This was my second time at the restaurant and it was even better than the first. We arrived at 7:30pm for our reservation but the table before lingered for about 10 – 15 minutes after paying their bill so we had to wait a little bit. The waitress was very nice and apologetic from the beginning so it wasn’t that bad.
The service was very good. We got water and bread along with the wine we ordered, and the food came out very quickly. We ordered an assortment of pasta (the di mare with clams and mussels was my favorite) and the Contadina pizza (which has egg and asparagus on it) and they were all generously sized. Most importantly, our dinner was perfectly flavorful. Everyone enjoyed the dinner and the coziness of the restaurant made it a nice place for a family dinner.
Big thanks to the chefs and our waitress for a great experience. I am looking forward to another meal here soon.

Cute little neighborhood restaurant in Bernal Heights. Place is crowded and reservation is recommended.
Service is great and waitstaff is attentive.
The CAPELLINI AL GRANCHIO was large enough to share. Plenty of crab meat to go around.
Since the restaurant is small and crowded, ventilation is horrible, but I’d happily come back

We had a reservation for 8p for my mom’s bday (made it on Seatme). We still had to wait 30 min. That knocked one star off. WTF. The bread wasn’t good, the goat cheese salad had only a tiny amount of goat cheese, and the roasted polenta was gross.
I wasn’t expecting much after a disappointing start…
Then the spaghetti, minus anchovies, blessed with kalamata olives, chili flakes, and capers, buh-​lewwwww my mind. The pizza rossa+mozzarella was solid.
I’d go back for the pizza and pasta, skip the apps.

Vega could have easily been a 4-​star joint if it wasn’t for one single reason: we had a reservation at 8 and didn’t get seated until 8:30 and they didn’t seem to really give a shit about it. This place is tiny, son, and they have no types of technology to manage their tables and flow.
Anyway, after the wait, we needed the food to be epic and it almost got there. The starters were forgettable (polenta was dry and flavorless, the insalata ricca with candied walnuts, raisins, and goat cheese was amateurish) but the mains were delicious. I had their popular gnocchi all bascaiola and it was incredible, quite a treat. My wife had the pizza rossa and it was a little work of art.
Again, could have easily been stellar if it wasn’t for the 30 min wait.

Invite my dad to dinner in one of the gentrified areas of SF & you’ll be reminded, in the form of horror stories & cautionary tales, of the city’s sordid past. Our drive to Bernal Heights brought up friends from a bygone era: «Didn’t Uncle so-​and-​so live in that corner house? Doesn’t so-and-so’s mom still own that house on Banks?» It’s a trip down memory lane, both the good & the not so good.
These days, Cortland’s much-​improved, modern shoppe-​lined street does much to ease my dad’s mind that we’re finally safe here.
Our party of three took our seats in Vega promptly at 5. From offering useful recommendations to the busser asking how we liked our pies, service was refreshingly genuine.
Their thin crust pizzas were delicate, yet sturdy & had a good amount of chewiness. We ordered:
– margherita: bubbly brown fior di latte mozzarella, a nice chiffonade of basil. Classic, & classically delicious.
– margherita w/​sausage added: did not try, but satisfactory for our carnivore, based on how much was eaten (or rather what little was left!)
– official name is «pizza ai funghi con olio di tartufo,» but feel free to refer to it as the mushroom & white truffle oil pizza like I did: shiitake mushrooms are the star of the show — meaty with a strong woodsy flavor, so glad for the lavish portion! Mild duo of mozzarella & fontina compliments, while a drizzle of white truffle oil elevates the mushroom flavor.
A solid contender to be one of my regular pizza joints.

A delicious neighborhood gem.
My girlfriends and I did a last minute dinner while was of our girlfriends was back in town. My friend suggested Vega and it was great choice.
To start, our party of four decided to go with two appetizers and a pizza to share:
*Impepata di Vongole e Cozze ($ 12) — A must order! The mussels come in a white wine broth. The chili flakes give it a slight kick. You’ll find yourself asking for more bread to soak up the delicious broth.
*Tortino di Granchio ($ 14) — Good & refreshing. A generous amount of shredded Dungeness crab meat, sliced cucumbers, and avocado slices are placed on top of endive leaves.
*Pizza Capricciosa ($ 15) — Sounded good, executed bad. The pizza was topped with mozzarella, prosciutto, artichoke, mushroom, and egg. I wish the prosciutto and egg were placed in a more centralized location on the pizza so it could be present on each slice. My other complaint is that our pizza was soggy and our egg was overcooked and lacked any kind of runniness in the yolk.
For my entrée, I went with the Gnocchi Alla Boscaiola. It was delectable and delicious! The homemade dumplings were tender with a slight chewiness to them. It was mixed with sausage and mushrooms in a cream sauce. Truffle oil was added to the dish as the finishing touch.
WHAT TO KNOW:
*Street parking (some metered)
*No wait at 6:15pm on a Tuesday
*Service was attentive and friendly
*Portion size, a pizza, two appetizers and an entrée for each of us was a lot of food.
*Dress in layers. The restaurant gets hot and stuffy.

Girls Night Out (GNO).
In my 20s, GNO meant getting tipsy, making googly eyes with the guy across the bar who looks cute… after 7 shots; then trying to walk over to him but toppling over because I walk in heels like a baby giraffe in roller skates… after 7 shots.
Now that I’m in my 30s, GNO means enjoying a carblicious meal with a glass of wine while gossiping about how long our significant other lasts in bed. Just kidding, fellas!
For a last minute GNO, I suggested going to Vega for dinner because I had a solid meal on my first visit and parking is plentiful. Vega is not a destination restaurant by any means but if you’re in the area and looking for a simple, tasty, and satisfying Italian meal than look no further than Vega. The portions are generous and prices are reasonable. On Tuesdays, kid’s pizzas are 50% off and on Wednesdays, bottles of wine are 50% off.
On my two visits, I’ve tried the following (sorry for the poor quality pics):
*Carpaccio di Polipo: Octopus carpaccio ($ 10):
*Tortino di Granchio: Dungeness crab w/​avocado, cucumber & endive ($ 14):
*Impepata Di Vongole E Cozze: Mussels w/​garlic, chili flakes, parsley & white wine ($ 12):
*Quattro Formaggi Pizza: Mozzarella, fontina, goat cheese, gorgonzola, & pear ($ 15 + $ 4 for prosciutto & egg):
*Pizza Capricciosa: Homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, artichoke, mushrooms & egg ($ 15):
*Pappardelle Al Ragu: Papparadelle w/​beef, pork & lamb ($ 18):
*Costolette Di Agnello: Rack of lamb w/​roasted polenta & white truffle oil ($ 22):
*Panna Cotta & Vanilla Gelato ($ 8 + $ 3):
You can’t go wrong with any of their seafood apps. They’re fresh and chock full of seafood goodness. My favorite is the mussels in the white wine broth. The broth is robust with a nice kick; it was an addicting dip for the grilled bread.
I enjoyed the thin crust pizza on my first visit (quattro formaggi). It was crispy throughout with a perfectly cooked egg that oozed upon poking. I didn’t have the same luck with the pizza capricciosa on my second visit. The middle was soggy upon arrival and the egg had a fully cooked yolk. *sad pouty lip*
If you have value on your mind, then I would opt for Vega’s pastas over their pizzas. The portions are HUGE. My papparadelle could easy feed 2 hungry people. The sheets of pasta were perfectly al-​dente and lightly tossed in a flavorful, thick ragu sauce. Really liked the trio of meats; the lamb added a subtle gamey bite. Rustic and comforting.
I had a taste of the tender rack of lamb (medium rare) which was meaty, juicy, and downright delicious. It was a special of the night (first visit) and I would highly recommend this dish if it’s available and if you’re feeling like a carniwhore that night.
If you still have room in your tummy, then the panna cotta is a great way to end dinner. It’s firm yet lightly smooth with a refreshing hint of lemon.
Service is everything you would expect from a good neighborhood restaurant: warm, friendly, and attentive. Much better than what I’ve experienced at their other restaurants (Liberty Café/​Bernal Star).
The ambiance is dim, a little cramped, and old skool. Great for a casual date but not for parties larger than 4.
For our GNO party of 4, we shared 2 apps, one pizza, 4 entrees, and each had a glass of wine. The total was only $ 43 pp including tip plus we each had a doggy bag to bring home.
Leaving with a food baby to go home to comfortably plop on the couch and watch Lifetime Movie Network sure beats nursing a hangover, bruises, and a twisted ankle from toppling over because I walk in heels like a baby giraffe in roller skates… after 7 shots.
Hmmm, I wonder how GNO in our 40s will be like… a little Magic Mike action?

The good:
*Italian in the city, with a neighborhood vibe (Bernal Heights, away from the SF hustle bustle)
*Solid pasta dishes
*Good and attentive service
*Takes reservations
The better:
*Most pasta is handmade and served perfectly al dente
*Generous portions
*Cozy, romantic, yet family-​friendly ambiance
The best:
*Homemade gnocchi with mushrooms, Italian sausage, parmigiano & white truffle oil (although, «I think it was better the first time I got it»)
The could be better:
*Cozy but cramped – elbow to elbow with your neighbors
*Almost always crowded, and you may have to wait even with a reservation
*The food is good, but sometimes the flavors are a little off
Notes:
*Still need to try the pizza
*Popular for take-​out
*Rounding up from 3.5 stars