Is This The Most Underrated Pizza in The Bay?

PHOTOS AND WORDS BY ANDY SAMWICK

With the inaugural San Francisco Pizza, Bagel and Beer Festival coming up on Saturday August 19th, the city is bringing together an assortment of Bay Area pizzarias, bagelries, and breweries to help build community through the celebration of these nostalgic foods. Many of our local communities have embraced and found comfort from these simple delicacies over the challenges we have faced over these past few years. There is one iconoclast that has risen to the top of the food game, despite the Bay’s challenges, and he’s a don of both pizza and bagels. His name is Jeff Krupman, he runs Pizzahacker. 

Krupman’s had the opportunity to make pizza for former POTUS Barack Obama, American media personality Kim Kardashian, her former husband Kanye West, tennis pro Serena Williams, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, and numerous tech billionaires. But I first met Krupman and started writing about him in December 2009, when Little Skillet was throwing a pop-up street event called Outside In, which, at the time, was benefiting La Casa De Las Madres and St. Anthony Foundation. Among many food and beverage vendors, Krupman really stood out to me. I was still challenged with my patience (east coast upbringing) in the slow food movement that was really making its mark back then. It was also beginning to inspire future restaurateurs that were watching and learning from these innovators. And Krupman was certainly showing some serious innovation with his cooking techniques. He Macgyvered a very small yet VERY HOT oven even famous chef/writer J. Kenji López-Alt  declared one of his favorite backyard pizza ovens. Krupman called it his “FrankenWeber” and it made his delicious pizzas come out rather quickly. Krupman was even in talks about releasing a commercial product that would modify existing Webers in similar ways. 

Krupman was too busy focusing on the art of the perfect pizza. At that time when he popped up around the Bay, he offered a range of toppings including “top shelf“ fresh buffalo mozzarella, anchovies, soppressata, and smoked salt to name a few. I remember trading slices with new friends who also were testing their patience while waiting for these legendary pizzas. It fucking rocked.

It took another four years, but on December 20th, 2013, Pizzahacker, which had been burgeoning the SF street food scene, finally opened its brick and mortar on Mission Street — right next to Bernal Heights, The Excelsior, and Noe Valley. All of these neighbors in all of these neighborhoods began eating it up. Krupman was doing something so completely different at the time. He admired and was influenced by the bread hype that was happening, especially with the powerhouse, Tartine. His life changing pizza journey to Rome in 2001 didn’t hurt, either. He told me he combined all his influences with a sense of nostalgia from his childhood in Ohio, when he ate tavern style flat, thin, cracker crust pizzas with unique additions like the peperoncini. His opening menu even had The Ohio which came with tomato sauce, pepperoni, those pepperoncini, provolone, fresh mozzarella, grana padano, and oregano. 

Krupman was also the first to start jarring early girl tomatoes and would can about 6000 pounds per season (for his Top Shelf Margherita, only available at this point seasonally, he  stretches mozzarella from a local curd from Fairfield’s Formaggi di Ferrante and makes a naturally-leavened dough by hand). He made sure the temperature was sufficient enough for his most important element: the crust. Krupman likes the crust to be open, tender crumb on the inside, crisp/blackened on the outside which has his distinct flavor and character. It is no wonder, successful pizza makers like Del Popolo learned about sourdough from Krupman. Over the years Krupman’s kitchen has been the starting ground for other pizza chefs that have gone on to open Casey’s Pizza, Long Bridge Pizza Co, Angie’s Pizza and helped break the ever popular Square Pie Guys. Even former head chef of the OG Little Skillet  and SF Chickenbox owner Christian Ciscle and Outtasight’s Eric Ehler have thrown pizza in Krupman’s establishment.

It makes sense that Krupman will be one of the standouts of this upcoming San Francisco Pizza, Bagel and Beer Festival, because he also was the first to do both pizza and bagel production in both his Mission and now in his most recently opened Mill Valley location which opened in 2020. Five years ago, he started BagelMacher in the Mission location and began to boil bagels in lye water like our “grandmas’ used to do” some generations ago. The bagel varieties included his version of the everything, a riff on salt with smoked salt and other riffs of sesame and poppy. Krupman and chef Roger Feely also played with zaatar for their sesame zaatar. Who can forget the Raisin Ras el Hanout bagel variety, made with a North African spice mixture, a total game changer. Today’s menu still has seasonal assortments of cream cheese and sandwiches like the Big Macher with your choice of bagel, topped with your choice of fish, (trout and salmon are the main protagonists) Sierra Nevada organic cream cheese, cucumber, red onion, capers, dill and his Veggie Vibes with Toy Box tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, dill, capers, olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon.

And although if you google top pizza, you may not see Pizzahacker on Soleil’s list (and the same goes for Soleil’s List of bagels). But, if you ask local folks who continue to make Jeff’s businesses thrive, they might tell a different tale about what is “top rated” or “the best” to them. Both the Pizzahacker and BagelMacher concepts are at the top of what I call my nostalgic food playlist experience.

Andy Samwick is a bon vivant who brings decades of food and beverage insight to the table.

Update: August 2, 2022, 7:05 a.m.: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jeff Krupman and Soleil Ho.

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