Pick an ethnicity, and you’ll likely find restaurants in our area to match it. But when it comes to local Italian, something’s missing. We’re not alone in our search for that family-run neighborhood place where the lighting is subdued, the pasta is made fresh daily, old-school dishes rule and the Chianti flows like ... well, wine.

You can still find that romanticized vision in San Francisco’s North Beach – Caffe Sport and Tony’s Pizza Napoletana come to mind – but places like that are getting more scarce (along with their hand-crafted pastas) as Chinatown expands.