Arizmendi Bakery (Lakeshore)
They bake one vegetarian pizza a day on a thin sourdough crust and sauce it with a garlic-and-serrano salsa verde that came down from the Cheese Board.
Why go
The Chronicle's Vanessa Labi met restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez here for a slice in May 2026 and wrote down what she ate: the pizza of the day, a roasted potato- and red onion-covered slice with gorgonzola and garlic oil.
1 The sauce is the part with a pedigree. Labi calls the herby salsa verde a version of the famous Cheese Board green sauce,
and says the kick comes from plenty of garlic and serrano chiles,
which cut straight through the cream on a potato pizza.1 The toppings change daily and stay vegetarian, so you take the pie the bakery made that morning. The counter also sells cookie brittle, which Labi found appropriately dry and just short of the crispness of biscotti.
1
Order this / avoid
- Order: a slice of the pizza of the day and sauce it heavily.1
- Order: cookie brittle to take away, and dunk it in milk later.1
- Avoid: turning up with a topping in mind. There is one pie a day.
What locals & experts say
- San Francisco Chronicle, Vanessa Labi, May 2026:
The shop's herby salsa verde, a version of the famous Cheese Board green sauce, has a hefty kick thanks to plenty of garlic and serrano chiles. It was just what was needed to brighten up the creaminess of the pizza.
1
Good to know
- Which door: this is 3265 Lakeshore Ave in Oakland. The Arizmendi shop at 1331 9th Avenue in San Francisco is a separate premises under the same association.
- Local fame: the Chronicle reports Oakland native Zendaya naming this bakery her favorite place to eat in the city. She has not said what she orders.1
Verdict
should-visit — Vanessa Labi ate here in May 2026 and filed under her own name, so the trading and the cooking are both dated inside four months, which almost nothing else in this batch can claim. She also traced the sauce to its origin instead of praising it. Against that, the co-op's own page would not answer, so the worker-ownership structure that shapes the whole operation is unsourced here and the rung stops below the top.