Paradise Pizza & Pasta | West Portal, San Francisco

O m g. I think I've found my favorite Italian place!

Growing up with my dad working as a professional chef in Italian and French restaurants, I had my fair share of Italian food like chicken piccata, homemade raviolis, the traditional tomato sauce spaghetti, butter lemon fish over salted linguine, chicken alfredo, etc. There was never a need or a craving to go to Italian restaurants, when my dad could've made it at home for dinner. With that said, my dining experience at Italian restaurants (anywhere) is pretty limited. 

My best friend and I were headed to watch the newly released Sundance Film Festival movie, True Story starring James Franco and Jonah Hill. The trailer was what captivated us to this movie and it turns out, the trailer basically summarized the whole story. Before the movie started, we headed out to grab a bite in the West Portal area, which is home to so many cute boutiques and a variety of restaurants. Thanks to our handy dandy Yelp, we decided on Paradise Pizza & Pasta (after two hours, since we both are extremely indecisive people). 

We were seated right away as we entered the restaurant 10 minutes after it opened for dinner. The interior of the restaurant is super cute! We decided to order a bunch of items to try and share and also to get Ilisha acquainted with Italian food so she'll be prepared to visit Italy later this year! How exciting!

For appetizers, we got the calamari and Italian fries. The Italian fries were definitely not what we expected. I thought it was going to be regular fries with Italian seasoning. Boy was I wrong! It was so interesting. Can't say that I'm a fan but definitely worth trying. Paradise definitely gives very generous portions. The appetizers alone would have filled me up. 

Ilisha's choice of three or four cheese pizza. The crust of this thing was AMAZING. Thank goodness I don't live close. I'd be here all the time! 

My choice of a sausage mushroom fusilli, it was interesting. The wine threw me off a bit as it was sweeter than I would've liked. But it was still really good!

And as for dessert (we really shouldn't have), we shared a tiramisu! How cute is this little thing?! We barely finished "this little thing" especially after the full meal we had just a few seconds earlier. 

No wonder so many people love Paradise. It's soo good and definitely delivers in terms of customer service and quality of the food. It's been close to two months since this experience (and I'm just writing about it now) and I need to be back asap!