The scent hits you first—yeasty, tangy, with hints of caramelized cheese hanging in the air like an edible memory. Inside Goat Hill Pizza, the warm glow of pendant lights illuminates tables where generations of San Franciscans have gathered over sourdough pies since 1975. Behind this Potrero Hill institution stands Philip De Andrade, a man whose path to pizza perfection began, surprisingly, in a seminary.
De Andrade’s journey from potential priest to pizza pioneer represents one of those beautiful life detours that reshape a city’s flavor profile. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Goat Hill Pizza has outlasted countless restaurant concepts that arrived with hype and departed quietly—from the fern bars of the ’70s to today’s QR-code-menu speakeasies.
The revelation that would change De Andrade’s life came during his studies at Hanna Center in Sonoma, where he discovered pizza for the first time in his early 20s. This culinary epiphany eventually led him away from religious vocation and toward a different kind of communion—one centered around a perfect sourdough crust that would become San Francisco gospel.
When Goat Hill opened in 1975, Potrero Hill had few dining options. Today, while San Francisco’s dining scene frantically cycles through concepts—from $19 toast to reservation-only omakase pizza pop-ups—Goat Hill’s steadfast presence offers something increasingly rare: authenticity without pretense.
Night visibility just got better for restaurants willing to embrace contradiction: While modern establishments scramble to create Instagram moments with neon signs and dramatic tableside preparations, Goat Hill’s crowds come for the unchanged classic—a crisp-edged, tender-centered sourdough pizza topped with fresh ingredients that require no filter or hashtag.
If contemporary San Francisco dining is characterized by concept restaurants with venture funding and five-year exit plans, Goat Hill stands as a living rebuke. Its sourdough starter has outlived dot-com booms, housing busts, and countless food trends declared “the new pizza.” In an era where fermentation has become fashionable enough to merit dedicated Instagram accounts, Goat Hill’s decades-old starter represents not a trend but a tradition.
The walls adorned with goat-themed décor nod to the area’s agricultural past—a genuine connection to place that stands in stark contrast to the carefully curated “authenticity” of newer establishments. Today’s diners, weary of concept restaurants designed primarily for social media, increasingly seek exactly what Goat Hill has always offered: genuine quality and connection, much like the renewed interest in making pizza at home—a return to experiences that feel personal, tactile, and real.
De Andrade is now semi-retired but continues as a consultant for the business he built with co-founders including Ruthann Dickinson, Karen Clark Monley, and the Lipskis. While restaurant groups build empires with identical reproductions across multiple neighborhoods, Goat Hill maintains just two locations—the original Potrero Hill site and another in West Portal.
Caught in the rain of ephemeral dining concepts? Goat Hill remains a shelter of consistency where the pizza endures. In a city where new restaurants arrive with elaborate backstories workshopped by marketing teams, there’s something revolutionary about a place whose story is simply true: a former seminarian who found his calling in creating a place where people break bread together.
You might come to Goat Hill Pizza for the legendary sourdough crust, but you’ll return for what’s become San Francisco’s most elusive dining experience—a place that stands for something more enduring than the next food trend.
