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Pasticceria Rulli
This authentic, elegant Italian pastry shop and café is mentioned in many categories, because Pasticceria
Rulli performs every part of Italian sweet and coffee service brilliantly. After a thoroughly French lunch
at Left Bank, walk down the street to Rulli for a bit of Northern Italy. Have dessert and coffee at the
marble tables, indoors and out, surrounded by hand painted murals and beautiful dark wood paneling. Many
informed clerks - efficient, helpful, smiling true professionals - work the counter, pulling out goodies
from a sparkling glass case full of luscious cream cakes with names like Brasiliana (a chocolate sponge
cake brushed with espresso liqueur, filled with whipped cream, and covered with chocolate shavings) and
San Francesco (baked meringue filled with fresh fruit and pastry cream, topped with whipped cream and
crumbled toasted meringue). The most elegant possible versions of Sacripantina and St. Honore cakes, the
staples of North Beach, are made here with all-butter puff pastry, the tenderest sponge cake soaked with
fine wines and spirits, and freshly made custard. You can buy these dreamy cream cakes by the slice or
whole. Above the cakes is a shelf of tiny cookies, fresh and crisp, like miniature palmiers (palm leaf-
shaped cookies made of puff pastry glazed with sugar), amaretti, hazelnut balls, and meringues dipped in
chocolate. You need to taste Pasticceria Rulli's Version of Italian cookies to appreciate how unique they
are, crumbly with bread crumbs or ground nuts, full of interesting flavors, often dense, but meltingly
tender. You can choose a little sampler of them to eat with some of the café's superb coffee, among he
best I've had here or in Italy. When you decide which cookies you adore, you can have the clerks pack an
exquisite box of them to take home or give as a gift with a pound of Pasticceria Rulli's house-roasted
coffee beans. For ice cream lovers, house-made sorbetti and gelati, made wit natural essences and fresh
fruits, are scooped into tiny cones or glass dishes. Or, you might be tempted by Rulli's satiny hand-dipped
chocolates. There's such an embarrassment of riches here you don't know which way to turn. This pasticceria
was founded by the son of a famous Turin pastry maker, and why he settled in larkspur, I can't imagine. The
place belongs on a chic alley off Union Square. It's a completely first-class operation offering the world
of Italian sweets at the highest level of quality. Marin doesn't deserve Rulli. I want them in the city!
- By Patricia Unterman
Article courtesy of Food Lover's Guide to San Francisco - Chronicle Books 1997
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