Garage Buona Forchetta

San Diego, CA (The Joy of Food) — If you’ve arrived in Coronado to dine at Buona Forchetta, you’ll need to look for the hot pink ‘Garage’ sign lit up on one side, formerly El Cordova Garage and now one of San Diego’s most decent places to find pizza.

I first visited during the height of the apocalypse and ordered a pizza to go, devoured shortly thereafter outside on the sidewalk with just the neighborhood dogs for company. On visits since I’ve sat in makeshift patio lined with astroturf, a place where you can easily spot who’s Italian and who’s not by who’s eating their pizza with a fork. ‘Non si fa,’ as we’d say in Italian.

You come here for the pizzas, plain and simple, which many are, and that’s a very good thing. I’m partial to the Regina Margherita myself, a medley of sweet San Marzano sauce mixed with cherry tomatoes, wisps of basil, and the all-important buffalo mozzarella for milky tang, but pretty much anything besides the offensive salmon-topped pizza will do.

You’ll find the crust — the cornicone — to be airily puffy in places and doughily dense in others, a style known as “canotto” in Naples that differs from the flatter, chewier type found in the city center at Da Michele, Brandi, Starita, or any number of famous pizzerias churning out thousands of these puppies a day. Canotto-style ends up being slightly sturdier than its thinner, liquid-absorbing ‘wet’ counterpart and appeals more to American tastes, where many believe that pizza is no place for a slip ‘n slide. And, it’s pretty.

If you are swayed by the pastas, particularly any of the daily specials on the hand-written board, they are delicious, but they tend to be heavy and rich. Buona Forchetta makes southern Italian (Neapolitan) pizza, but borrows from the north when it comes to the rest of the menu, where sauces, creams, and gravies are the norm on top, inside, and everywhere else.

From the ashes of the iconic El Cordova Garage rises a wood-fired, pizza-churning machine, and we can credit it with doing the impossible: finally bringing decent food to tourist-laden Coronado. You’ll have to know it’s there to find it, tucked away in the sleepy backstreets of Orange Ave. apart from the main pedestrian thoroughfare, but once you do, it’s as close to Italy as you’re going to get within five minutes of the Pacific Ocean.

Written by Joy

Thanks for reading. The Joy of Food blog celebrates eating well, traveling often, and living la dolce vita. San Diego, California is home base, but thoughts are from all over. Reviews and photos help to highlight wonderful (or not) food experiences from around the world.

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