Danilo Bakery's BaoNecci
Categories: Bakeries, Coffee & Tea, Italian [Edit]
Neighborhood: North Beach/Telegraph Hill516 Green St
(between Bannam Pl & Grant Ave)
San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 989-1806
- Hours:
Tue-Thu 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Fri-Sat 8:00 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
Sun 8:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. - Price Range: $
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: No
- Delivers: No
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: No
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: Yes
- Wi-Fi: Free
- Good for: Breakfast, Lunch
- Alcohol: None
44 reviews
Neighborhood: Russian Hill
"Good sandwiches, and various different types of sandwiches, cool location, staff was cool and even brought out my latte instead of shouting…" read more »
38 Reviews for Danilo Bakery's BaoNecci
It took me 3 months of walking by this place every morning to walk inside, and am I glad I did. It's like stepping into Italy in the US. It's pretty authentic. I haven't seen panini like this since I left Italy.
I come here for lunch A LOT. I love it. The soups, panini, pizza, and little chocolatie sweet biscuits (cookies)are excellent, especially their florentines. The coffee here is among the best in North Beach. The service is great, and while you wait you can refresh your rusty high school Italian language skills.
Ohhh man. Ohhhhh man. Ohhh geeze!!!! Walking around in N Beach and i wanted a coffee and a chocolate something. So we stopped here after walking by it for the past 8 months. I kept telling myself i should have stopped in. I will never doubt my hunch again. Walking in here is like going to a cafe in Italy. Seriously, guys sitting around watching soccer, Nutella on the shelf's and awesome coffee and treats. I found my new Sunday morning hangout, no more cartoons i guess.
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Definitely a great place for Sunday Mornings.....
I can even put up with thte sportson TV.
The food is great. Lovely fresh breads. Yummy.
Definitely recommend.
Great food, friendly service (but slow), nice location. It's pretty small and the selection of eats was somewhat limited.
There are more upscale ($$$$$) places on Columbus, and there are a few other holes in the wall along Green St. on the same block. I heard someone walking down the street raving about a place half a block away. But I wasn't unhappy with my pizza or my nice warm latte on a chilly day, nor was my table on the sidewalk a terrible place to sit.
If you're looking for low priced lunchy stuff, this is a home run. If you want a fancy upscale place, or a wacky pizza centric joint, keep walking, it's probably 1-2 blocks away.
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danilo's is great!!! you'll feel like you've stepped into an italian cafe upon walking through the door- italian men watching futbol, drinking espresso and eating huge plates of gnocci. besides having really good coffee and pastries, they also serve homemade soups and pasta, they take orders for fresh italian, wheat or sourdough bread (you can place orders and pick up on saturdays), and they sell pizza and lasagne. be sure to get there by 5:00 because, unfortunately, they close early.
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Danilo's is a good neighborhood place where to get a slice of pizza and cannoli that is filled with this delicious ricotta cheese.
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It's been more than ten years since I lived in Italy and it's places like this that make me happy that if I can't live in Italy, at least I'm close to this place.
I have been making a very deliberate tour of North Beach and no matter how many times I walk around, I always come here for lunch. My favorite is the tuna panino with impossibly thin foccacia, mayo, capers and something...sorta spicy. I love these people - they UNDERSTAND the Italian left inside of me, and nurse it back to health. The cookies are divine and so is everything else I've tried.
But I come back, again and again, for the tuna panino.
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The best slice of pizza i have had in a long time.genuine itallian food.i simply love their sandwiches.Im a regular customer here. The staff are also very friendly.The place is small and neat.its also a good place to hang out with your friends.
This is the best place outside of Italy to get authentic Tuscan Italian food in North Beach. A family, from Italy will serve us with some great combinations sandwiches, soup and salads.there are different types of cookies .i might go on and on ..to cut a long story short. this place is great and im their regular customer ..this place is good for large groups..
Lots of different kind of cookies every where!!!! Love it. Behind the cookie counter are the wooden shelves of amazingly great smelly fresh bread. I love the yeasted Italian corn bread the most. The rounds of olive oily-foccacia that are scattered with course salt and rosemary, scallions, or tomato sauce is a close second. The atmosphere seems really relaxing and friendly.
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Love love love this bakery..it is very Italian!!! The owners are from Italy and they have updated the menu with great sandwiches and cookies. This is also a great place to pick up your bread and a great coffee..
Had a warm prosciutto, mozzarella, and mushroom sandwich and a latte on a late Saturday morning and everything was great. The sandwich was perfectly toasted, the coffee was great and the gentleman behind the counter was extremely nice.
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Wonderful soy latte's and amazing bakery...truly a North Beach favorite! I have had nothing but great times here and the owners are amazing as well...a must if you are in the neighborhood!
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Geeze! How could I have missed this place for so long? Perfect focaccia , pizza bread and the best Italian loaves and mini bread in the city.
Tip! If you want to sample the pizza bread, Gino and Carlo are only a couple of doors down the street and they usually have at least a full sheet of the pizza bread to munch on, Sunday mornings.
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The best authentic Tuscan Italian food in North Beach. Walter Gambaccini and his family are from Lucca Italy and serve up some great combinations of focaccia sandwiches, soup and salads. The lasagna is to die for. It is a perfect place for a relaxed North Beach lunch. Beer and wine should be coming soon. They are also open late on Friday and Saturday nights. Also there is a big screen TV for Italian Soccer matches.
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I lived in North Beach from 1987 to 1995 and Danilo Bakery was one of my daily stops. Eventually I was on a first name basis with the owner and was right at home here. A move to the Peninsula left me Danilo-less but I made do with my own homemade bread and what I could get at Whole Foods. Recently I came back. New owners and yet a very familiar feel. A very handsome young man behind the counter flirted with me (as only a European man can do!) and I found they are making the delicious corn bread loaves on Saturday again! And just as good as I remembered! I'll be back for more of the bread and a leisurely lunch!
Great Italian place!!! Great coffe, great pizza, great focaccia, GREAT PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!
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YUM! I love those flat chocolate cookies. I don't even know what they're called but it had chocolate and nuts and I needed a glass of milk to wash it down. I'm starting to understand why folks like to live in this cozy neighborhood. So many great bakeries.
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Great service and excellent latte's! The family who owns this place is so nice!! They humor me with what little italian I know and they ask me if I'd like the usual (a large latte w/ non-fat milk) when I come in---I love that. I also love how they let me bring my pug in while I'm ordering my beverage. I used to leave him outside but one day he got tangeled up in the patio furniture and I thought someone stole him! I went sprinting outside and the female owner came running out with me. She was as concerned as I was! From that point on she let me bring him in. Great place and warm service. They make my mornings fun and kick off a great work day for me.
Places like Danilo Bakerey are why North Beach is such a favorite neighborhood, both to those lucky enough to live here as well as visitors. It is an Italian bakery and not just in name, the baked good are just like you would find in a good bakery in Italy. The cookies are scrumptious and the breads divine! A nice place to enjoy a cup of cappuccino and a pastry, then pick up a bag of cookies to treat yourself when you get home. The born-in-Italy owners are always present and really put their hearts into this place.
A bit of movie trivia... this bakery is featured in both "Metro" with Eddie Murphy's character living right above it, also in "Mrs. Doubtfire" with Robin Williams passing it on the way to his character's apartment a couple of doors down.
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I Love Danilo. I love the fact that I can wake up in the morning and take my dog for a little walk down the block and pick up a fresh, small loaf of bread for 85 cents and a cuppa joe and then have it for breakfast. This place is truly and genuinely Italian. Their pizzas and sandwiches are excellent. The atmosphere is excellent. And they are always friendly. And most importantly, they love my dog.
You just can't ask for more.
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If you're a lucky American kid, and you get to go to Italy one of the first things you notice about the food is how familiar, and yet foreign it is. That's almost too obvious a statement, but when you're raised on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made with sliced wheat bread your first sampling of an Italian panino can be a tricky experience.
For me, I felt like I had too many choices before me, and none really good. (Looking at a case of panini) Open faced, looks like some combination of tuna, mayo, and peas-WTF? Next, prosciutto crudo, that means raw ham? Next, and on and on. I learned how to order prosciutto cotto and pretty much left it at that.
Then you go back to Italy a little older, and this time some strange impulse moves you to order the bizarre sandwich with the peas in it. This panino, and many that follow change your life. You bust through the American palette barrier, and you'll never again hold a Subway or a Quizno's in high esteem.
Back home panini have become very popular, and they are good but they are also familiar and unforeign to me. Then, about one month ago I noticed that Danilo looked a little different than it used to, and I walked in to see what's up. There are some nice new owners, who have moved the bakery cases around, and whoa! there they were! Panini only an Italian could make - giant wedges of impossibly thin focaccia. Toppings like tuna, capers, tomato and mayo, or ham, mushroom, and melted provolone. Tomato basil, olive oil, and mascarpone.
I ordered the tuna panino. The tuna is used almost like a condiment to lightly add flavor to the real star of the show-perfectly flavored tomatoes, and the capers add the right amount of zing. I ate the sandwich while walking down Green Street, and when I finished I turned around and walked straight back into Danilo and ordered the ham and mushroom sandwich. Same result, goodness.
Now, any time I walk near Green Street between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., I go to Danilo. Little by little they are adding to the menu, pizzas by the slice can be had as well. The space is still filling in, but I'm looking forward to the day when their panini case is stacked high with strange combinations. I will try them all.
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This place is the best place outside of Italy! I go there everyday they are open. The panini and soup are soooo good. The family who owns the place are the grooviest people in the world..Great coffee, cookies, pizza! I love BaoNecci! GROOVY1
Experience Italy in America. My daughter and I wanted some bread from a real Italian bakery while in North beach for the day, so a stop in at Danilo was a planned stop. What I didn't expect was the bonus of feeling that we had just stepped into a different country for a moment as they were all speaking Italian. What a joy when you find a quaint little place that puts a smile on your face, even if it means a few extra carbs!
You feel like you are in Italy in this small neighborhood bakery. We only discovered the place recently and it's a favorite place to go when we are in North Beach.
The couple that run the place really care about what they are serving. Everything we have tried is delicious, the foccaccia, pizza and pastries. Last time we were there, we got a complimentary rice, donut thingy that was absolutely great. Even though Italian is the main language spoken (the wife speaks English), it's all delicious in any language! To top it off, they make really good espresso, better than we've found elsewhere in the city. A great place to hang out on a sunny weekend afternoon and just take in the atmosphere of an authentic Italian place with great food.
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Seems a nice Italian family took over from the little old ladies that used to run this place. These charming new people were from the town of Lucca near Florence.
I tried a hot-pressed focaccia with prosciutto, mozzarella and mushrooms which was so yummy that I had to turn back up the street and try another one: the tuna and tomato foccacia was out of this world in that it tasted true to the ones I've had in Italy as a kid.
The owner admitted that he made everything right in the shop and that the tuna "sandwich" was indeed a specialty from his hometown.
Sundays they also serve fresh italian donut fritters ("fritelle").
Don't miss this gem and go before they ever think of using any shortcuts like most other joints do over time when they start making money.
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I walked in debating whether I wanted the pizza or the foccacia, $3.50 for a slice of pizza and $2.50 for the foccacia. Cheapie it is! Got the marinara foccacia and man, walking down the street back to school, it was definately not a plain foccacia. Very flavorful and the perfect consistancy. Didn't have the time to try any of the cookies or pastries, but they definately look awesome, so on the list for future visits.
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Do I love Danilo because a trip there makes a super pleasant stroll (uh, can it be a stroll if it leaves you panting?) from my office? Because of the burly, gruff-yet-sheepish Italian dude at the counter who doesn't really speak or understand much English? Because it manages to convince me that a lunch of focaccia (bread) and cookies (more bread) is like totally balanced? Or maybe because it's cheap and yum?
All I know is that this place would totally get 5 stars if they hadn't once charged me $3.50 for a slightly-soggy undersized cannoli and if crazy annoying shit didn't always happen to me when I'm trying to eat my potato focaccia and drink my mineral water and eat my rice fritter in the nearby park:
-Me and B-- were just sitting on a bench eating carbs and mind out own business when an old woman walked up to our bench and started staring us down. She looked us up. She looked us down. She decided that we were too tough for her and she walked over to the next bench. But woman, she keeps staring at us! More at B--, really. For like 15 minutes. Even when there's way more interesting shit to watch, like some road rage happening directly in front of us in the street and Italian men leaning out their windows yelling stuff at each other in Italian. Maybe she's staring at B-- 'cause she thinks that there's only room for one Asian person in the park and that's her. I dunno. B-- is uncomfortable, so I tell him to stick his tongue out at her. Like, in a dirty way. He had crumbs and stuff all over his tongue, but it totally worked.
-Street person with a bleeding ulcer comes up to B-- and A-- and me and asks us if we're in college. "Uh no." THEN he starts singing Christmas carols to us. Well, ONE Christmas carol. It's fucking October. And the Christmas carol takes about 9 minutes for him to get through because he takes these extraordinarily long pauses between the verses. Plus, it's that fucking "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" song. I hate that song. Also, there's a man in running shorts and no shirt wearing a werewolf mask running around the park.
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Best focaccias in town, plus some things you can't find anywhere else like the farro soup (farro is a type of Italian grain similar to barley), delicious! Ideal for lunch and quick snacks. State of the art cappuccinos and coffees. Very friendly Italian environment! Also, great place to practice your Italian!
Every so often I have a mozzerella and tomato sandwich on focaccia at Cafe Greco. But I hate to order what I can make at home (and unfortunately, much to my husband's chagrin, I can and do love to make most things you can get on a restaurant menu).
So one day I asked Greco where they get their focaccia. At Danilo they say. Well heck, that's just a couple of blocks from my place! So on Friday afternoon I walk over and inquire about the focaccia. Can I get some? Oh sure, I can. FOR TWENTY DOLLARS A SHEET. Holy crap!
I was embarrassed to voice my dismay (hey, I'm on a student's budget). Um, can I get half? Yes.
Half made about six sandwiches, so not bad. But not as good as if I'd made the bread myself, which I will do next time.
The sad part was the ten dollar bread was overbaked way, WAY browner than I like my bread. Of course, the one time I throw down a ten spot for a damn loaf of bread I'm going to get a burned piece. However, I know the bread is good because I have it often at Greco.
This bread is delicious. But be prepared to be a little sore on your way out the door.
Great cookies here. The amaretto are my favorites and they charge by the pound. Do you know how much I'd be worth if I was a cookie?
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I haven't been here in ages but when my husband and I were dating I lived on telegraph hill and we used to go and get almond macaroons together. Thinking about this place reminds me of a sweet and simpler time. The macaroons are the only thing that we ever got here, but they are some of the best in north beach. Watch out though for the old lady behind the counter because she will give you about three times the amount of cookies than you ask for and they sell them by the pound. The other good thing about this place is that you can order the macaroons soft and chewy or dry and crispy, most bakeries will be only one or the other. This is a hidden little jewel that most tourist walk right by without even noticing.
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There are few places in north beach that are genuinely Italian anymore; this is one of them. The new owner is from Luca, near Florence. Walking in door is a cultural experience. You can practice your Italian or just appreciate the care that is put into their products. I generally just go for a sandwich but they have great pastries also-- they supply Cafe Greco among others.
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One of my favorite North Beach stops. Feels like you stepped about 40 years back in time. Their Italian Wedding Cookies are the best I've had. A great place to practice your Italian as well.
UPDATE 12/7/07:
Since the ownership has changed, so have the wedding cookies. I don't like them as much, but that's okay. This place is still a North Beach gem. It still feels like Italia in here.
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Great bread. I will go all the way across the city for the bread.
There are so many bakeries in North Beach it is hard to know where to go - Danilo is the cookie bakery. Order special breads for parties or Easter - but really - if you are in a pinch and need a gift for a party, house warming or casual birthday - pick up an assorted dozen Italian cookies and wait for the thanks to come rolling in.
As close to the real deal as we've found in San Francisco. Try the ham and mozzarella, the tuna, or the vegetarian w/marscapone from the case. Delish! Foccacia is good too.
Sometimes on Sundays, they sell out of the good stuff by two...so go early and eat at the small counter or snag one of the few tables if you can. This place is no frills, but as close to Italy as you're going to get around here.
Danilo Bakery makes the best Rasberry Rings and Apricot Twists on the planet!
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