Flour + Water.

Flour + Water

Ten courses of pasta for $135, or one plate of taleggio scarpinocc sitting in butter and aged balsamic. The shapes change daily and half portions mean you can eat four of them.

Why go

The Mission room has been making pasta by hand since 2009 and the menu is rewritten around whatever is in season, so the shape is the news. The MICHELIN inspector names two: chitarra spaghetti made with sea lettuce, paired with manila clams, guanciale and crunchy pangrattato, or ginger-infused caramelle filled with creamy koginut squash, sauced with sage brown butter.2 Julia Chen scored it 9.2 for the Infatuation in July 2024, the outlet's top band, and made the same point about range: crimped mezzalune, hand-stamped corzetti, canoe-shaped scarpinocc.1 The kitchen puts unlikely things on top of them, cocoa and rutabaga, uni butter and sourdough breadcrumbs, corn pudding and calabrian chili crunch. Half portions are on the menu, which is the practical detail that lets you eat four shapes instead of one.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the pasta tasting menu if you want the range without deciding. Ten courses, $135 as of July 2024, and Chen warns it is more food than one sitting wants.1
• Order: the taleggio scarpinocc off the standard menu. Each pocket holds mild taleggio and sits in butter and aged balsamic.1
• Order: the duck tortelloni, tinted reddish-purple with juniper berries and finished with warm smoked cherries. Then the chocolate budino under espresso whipped cream and sea salt.1
• Avoid: the pizzas. Chen finds the crust limp at times and is blunt about the fix: Skip these and order more pastas instead.1

What locals & experts say

• The Infatuation SF (Julia Chen, 25 July 2024), 9.2: since 2009 this kitchen has run what she calls an unofficial campaign to make pasta unpredictable, and her one real objection is printed in the avoid line above.1
• MICHELIN Guide California: in the guide with no distinction printed as at 21 August 2026. The inspector on what draws the room: it's really the kitchen's vibrant blend of Californian and Italian cuisines that draws the crowds.2
• Janelle Bitker spent a Chronicle project inside the pasta shop in February 2023, and the scarpinocc is on the card permanently because diners would not stop asking for it. Thomas McNaughton sets an accordion cutter to two by two and a half inches, pipes the taleggio down the middle, rolls each rectangle into a cylinder, pinches the ends and presses a dimple in the center. Four people can spend nine hours a day on this.3
• The kitchen's own encyclopedia holds more than eighty shapes. MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez counted them for the San Francisco Chronicle's 2026 Top 100, where the room sits 37th, and singled out the scarpinocc as a raft-shaped pasta with a dimple that serves as a reservoir for milky Taleggio cheese and tart balsamic vinegar.4
• Their 2025 list put the room in its family: Thomas McNaughton and co-chef Ryan Pollnow now run a Pasta Shop, Penny Roma, a pizzeria and a supermarket pasta line, and the original is still one of the hardest reservations in San Francisco.5

Good to know

• Booking: Resy, released twenty-eight days ahead at midnight. Some space is held for walk-ins.1
• If you cannot get in: Penny Roma and Flour + Water Pizzeria are the same operator's other rooms, trading under their own names, and the Pasta Shop is down the street for a glass while you wait.
• Menu: the pasta list changes daily, so a shape named here is an example of the work rather than tonight's menu.
• Getting there: Harrison at 20th, in the Mission.

Verdict

must-visit — Seventeen years of handmade pasta and the shapes are the argument: hand-stamped corzetti, canoe-shaped scarpinocc, chitarra cut with sea lettuce and dressed with manila clams and guanciale. The Infatuation scored it 9.2 in July 2024, its top band, and the MICHELIN inspector calls the ever-changing pasta the main event. Half portions mean you can eat four shapes in one sitting, which is the whole reason to come here rather than to a room that makes one good pasta. The pizzas are the known weak spot, and Julia Chen's advice is to skip them and order more pasta.