Bella Trattoria

Good food. Good service. Good prices. Free dessert too. I recommend the bone marrow appetizer and salmon pasta.

I’ve been on an Italian kick lately and my friends suggested I try Bella. They insisted I get the gnocchi.
Okay, one plate of the green gnocchi with mushrooms in cream sauce, please! The gnocchi hands down was the best I’ve had. I am pretty sure there was shaved black truffle on top too. Flavor wise, the dish was rich, mushroom flavored, and perfect balance of cream. My friend ordered the gnocchi as well, but in a red sauce with sausage. I tried some of his and preferred the red to the green, but nonetheless, both were a worthy choice! My only gripe is that the gnocchi could stand to be cooked a little bit less. They were a little too soft for me.
The ambience is dim and relaxed. It’s a great spot for a date night. The service is friendly and attentive. Bella is definitely a restaurant I can see myself frequenting more often.

Arrived for lunch to an empty room on a rainy weekday. The young Italian waiter was easy going and offered us tastings of 3 of his red wines. Lunch is very much an abbreviated menu with mostly soup, salads and pastas. There is one meat and one fish dish only. None of those great sound veal dishes and the like that you’ll find on the dinner menu. We all had a glass of wine with a complimentary antipasti plate small but enough to keep us going till the food arrived 20 minutes later. Three dishes 1– daily fish was trout with spinach, de-​boned, easy to eat and clean, great for lean meal. 2– Seafood clams, squid, mussels, spaghetti simple, fresh ingredients, cooked just right 3– the hands down winner was the gnocchi in tomato sausage sauce, absolutely silky smooth just melted in your mouth. That alone is worth the visit and the 5 stars.
Dessert was panacotta ringed with berries also excellent as was the spumoni gelato. The interior was on the dark side kind of cozy place, seating maybe 50 or so. Good for a date night. I can imagine it getting pretty busy at dinner on weekends. Bring your parking fairy, as parking in the Clement st. neighborhood is horrendous.

Italian is my favorite cuisine and it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have searched high and low for a restaurant that satisfies my appetite for great quality pasta and bruschetta. Bella Trattoria is found on the busy street of Geary Blvd in San Francisco, where there are a number of businesses ranging from restaurants, retail shops, and even car dealerships.
Bella Trattoria is a quaint space that has an ambiance for the PERFECT first date. It is usually packed during the weekends, so I would suggest making reservations before arriving here — depending on the day that you come, of course. My experiences here have always been positive. With or without a reservation, the host in the front of the restuarant immediately greets our party the minute we step into the restaurant. After being poured a nice glass of wine by our waiter, we are offered an appetizer «on the house» by the chef. While enjoying our free appetizer, I have the opportunity to look over the menu. The food menu is just as extensive as the wine list they offer at Bella. With the variety of pasta dishes, they offer a number of Italian dishes such as gnocchi, lasagnas, and carpaccio.
My favorite dish would be Tagliatelle Ragu made with Salmon and Caviar. With the pasta handmade in their kitchen, the craft and time put into the dish is noticeable as you take your first bite. A second favorite I would recommend on trying would be their gnocchi. Again, their gnocchi is also handmade in their very own kitchen, which brings out the great quality taste. The softness of the dough and the house made sauce complements the two ingredients remarkably.
Though with the glass of wine, appetizer, and your main dish may be filling, please try to save room for some dessert! Bella Trattoria serves an arrangement of desserts that delectable and a perfect way to end your meal. My all-​time favorite dessert from Bella Trattoria would be their Panna Cotta, which at our first visit to the restaurant, was given to us for free as compliments from the chef.
Bella Trattoria is easily be one of my favorite Italian restaurants in the Bay Area.

I’m so happy to have finally found a good and authentic italian place! Can’t wait to come back. The eggplant parmigiana is amazing, and the panna cotta is otherworldly.

Very cute and charming place located in the Richmond. My sister in law found this restaurant last minute and we were able to get a table for 4 without any issues. We ordered a bottle of Italian wine recommended by our server (which was not on the wine list!) and he even probably us a decanter to aerate the wine for better taste!
We all ordered a pasta dish and everything was extremely delicious. Cannot complain about anything. The food was great — the seafood was on point and the complimentary panna cotta was divine. This place is not a tourist place and is clearly for locals. Would go again anytime!

Everything about this place is amazing! The ambiance was perfect and the staff was more than friendly and helpful. It does take a while for the food to come out but that wasn’t a problem for me. I ordered the 3 ingredient carbonara which was excellent and for dessert I ordered the Panna Cotta, everything about it was mind blowing. I would highly recommend stopping by for dinner here.

Came here on a Saturday night with a group of 5 and thoroughly enjoyed it. We arrived about half an hour early for our reservation, so they led us to the bar and helped us choose a bottle of wine to share while we waited. As soon as we sat down, I knew it would be good, because the staff are actually Italian. And Italians don’t mess around when it comes to their cuisine.
When we got to our table, they brought out some yummy house-​made bread (great texture, would have been even better if it had been warm, but still very good) with a SERIOUSLY DELICIOUS dip of oil with chopped sun-​dried tomatoes. Multiple people in our group (myself included) remarked that we’re usually not huge fans of sun-​dried tomatoes, but this dip was the bomb. We got like 3 or 4 plates of it, and could have happily eaten more! Honestly, if that was all I had eaten, I still would have given this place 5 stars. I will dream about that oil.
The whole menu looked so delicious that we had a really tough time deciding what to order. We ended up sharing some appetizers:
1) BURRATA: I pretty much always order this when I see it on a menu, and theirs was particularly creamy and delicious.
2) BONE MARROW: two people in our group are huge bone marrow fans who usually get judged for their habits of cracking open bones like cavemen to suck out the delicious interior, so they felt vindicated to see it on such a classy menu, and obviously we ordered it. They gave us a pretty generous portion, served in the bone with some crostini and a parsley salad on the side. It was great!
3) POLENTA: Not much to say here, other than it was very yummy!
We each ordered our own main dishes, but I tried some of all of them, including:
1) SORRENTINA GNOCCI: This is what I ordered. It was wonderful. I love gnocchi, and I keep hearing that this place has some of the best gnocchi in the city, so I had to try it, and I gotta say, I’d believe that superlative! It melted in my mouth.
2) RAGU SPECIAL: I can’t remember the name of the pasta, but I think it was either tagliatelle or pappardelle. The sauce wasn’t as good as I had hoped (a bit on the salty side) but overall pretty good.
3) FRUTT’ ‘E MAR: Very good! I only tried the pasta itself and the calamari in the bites I took (so I can’t judge the shrimp or mussels), but both were great. You could definitely taste a hint of squid in the squid-​ink pasta. The sauce was also very good.
Next time I want to get the gnocchi verdi!
For dessert we shared the following:
1) VANILLA AFFOGATO: So. Good. If you like coffee ice cream, get this. It’s like what coffee ice cream dreams of being.
2) PANNA COTTA: I loved the balsamic glaze. It added just a touch of tartness to the smooth and creamy dish.
3) SPUMONI: Wonderful. Ice cream at its classiest.
Not that many places do house-​made pasta around here, and certainly not with the variety of this menu. If you’re craving pasta in the city, this is a great spot!

Great service and delightful food. Danay, server, gave me an extraordinary service. Thanks so much.
This is must restaurant to try.

Came here for NYE and had the prix fix dinner… Very reasonably priced and very giving on the appetizers and dishes. Brought out an array of options and everything was delicious…
The ~5 appetizers were excellent the pasta dish was fantastic and the main courses were excellent… The desserts were good too and the service was nice. The restaurant itself was small but very homey with a great ambiance. Had a nice feel and definitely a great date spot. Came with my family and everyone loved the food and the experience…
Will definitely come back!

We can’t wait to go back to Bella. I was looking for a restaurant near the De Young Museum and Unilocal helped me find this place. Even my in-​laws were impressed, so I scored some points here.
The five of us all loved our food, and the highlights were the Sorrentina, gnocchi and sausage, and Cotoletta, breaded pork, which were both amazingly good. The service was very good and friendly. They even had gluten-​free pasta.

Brought my wife and kids after finding this restaurant on Unilocal.First, the hostess and service staff were very friendly and attentive. We never had to ask for anything, whether it was a refill on water or bread. We were pretty hungry when we arrive but we all thought the bread and sun dried tomato oil sauce was amazing.
The restaurant environment itself is very warm and relaxed, and although it’s a very tiny space the proprietors have done an excellent job utilising the space. It didn’t feel cramped at all.
The food was as advertised, my son and I had lasagna, which maintained an excellent balance between pasta, cheese and sauce. My wife and daughter had the Menestra Di Verdure Winter Vegetable Minestrone w/​Lentils, which was very flavourful and chalked full of fresh veggies.
The portions were more than fair and the meal was absolutely worth the price.
I absolutely recommend this restaurant if your looking for classic Italian foodin quaint environment. Also, superb service.

Ate it & loved it:
— Burrata.
— Parmigiana (eggplant).
— Gnocchi (Sorrentina).
— Pappardelle.
— Tiramisu.
— Panna cotta (gratis).
Extremely welcoming host, lovely servers (the right amount of attentive and fast, all from Italy based on the ladies I’ve met so far) and ambiance.
Please do not bring your loud and misbehaving children to this establishment. Please take your sad and drunken «ladies night» antics to some dive bar instead. Both scenarios have soured my meal various times, but I won’t fault Bella for that. However, prepare to pull your hair out looking for parking.
Alla prossima, amici!

Solid 4-​star Italian food for the Bay Area.
They’re relatively inexpensive for delicious food if you’re hunting around the city for some good stuff. Pillow-​y gnocchi and Bolognese sauce deserve a mention.
It wasn’t phenomenal, but the food was tasty, flavorful and hot. Our service was great too, but there wasn’t anything that stood out as totally incredible. Music was a little off — it felt like the team had left the top 40 on accidentally and serenaded a lot of dates with it.

A solid place for Italian out in the Richmond! It’s great not to have to go into North Beach to find some good Italian food! We came in for an early dinner on a weeknight and were able to get seated pretty quick. It’s a cozy place and we started off with meatballs, followed by our pasta. The staff was friendly and bonus points as they brought us a big portion of some tasty, soft bread. The meatballs were tasty, mixed in with some veggies. We’d definitely order them again!
I got the pasta norcina and my wife got the carbonara. Both dishes were very good– the norcina had really nice mushroom flavor and the no frills carbonara didn’t need anything else to be quite tasty! Portions were good sized as well, we will definitely be back! One recommendation– make a reservation as it seems like this place can get busy!

I have been here a few times, so I finally am getting around writing a review. This place is a very cozy, little Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. A walking distance from my place, its ambiance makes for an excellent date night place if you don’t want to drive, and I would drive to eat here if I lived somewhere else in the city. The food is delicious, it has a small bar where you can enjoy a cocktail or eat at the counter, and the drinks on the menu are very good. I started the meal by ordering a Negroni Sbagliato, then switched to a bottle of very good prosecco ($ 44). In the past I had the clams pasta, and it was very good. Saturday night, we ordered the Cavoletti appetizer (Brussels sprouts with bacon bits), and I had the Gnocchi Verdi — in a mushroom cream sauce, and I was very happy with it.
This was not a special occasion, and although we have been here a few times before, I would not call us regulars, and the service was attentive and very friendly with a positive twist: they brought us Bruschetta (pls pronounce it broo-​ske-​ttah) and a Panna Cotta dessert to share, both on the house. Both were delicious, and you bet we will go back more often.

Five stars for food… Bruschetta, Aglio y olio, squid ink pasta, gnocchi… Tiramisu and free (!!!) panacotta… If you order these things, you’ll have an excellent meal.
Three stars for wait time. This place was busssssy and ppl don’t seem to want to leave… Gotta really enforce the 2 hour seating time!
And 4 stars for service… Smooth, friendly, and complimentary bites fr ppl at the door (though sitting down on time would have been preferred)
Solid 4 stars!

Tenho dois restaurantes apenas que eu recomendaria para casais em San Francisco e o Bella Trattoria é um deles.
Fiz a minha reserva usando o site Open Table e lá eles possuem uma opção de comentários. Deixei um compartilhando que estaria indo jantar lá para comemorar meu aniversário de 1 ano de casamento e adoraria que eles fizessem com que a data fosse especial.
Bem, acreditem-​me, eles fizeram.
Chegamos lá por volta das 20h e até que a nossa mesa estivesse pronta, ficamos no bar aguardando. Ok, chegamos um pouco antes do horário da reserva mesmo, sem problema algum. A nossa surpresa foi quando o garçom se aproximou de nós com duas taças de champanhe nos parabenizando pelo aniversário de casamento. Eles sabiam quem nós éramos! Fiquei imensamente feliz e eu tinha simplesmente acabado de chegar.
O lugar é bem escuro à noite, com uma iluminação baixa, própria para casais (embora vários grupos estivessem por lá àquela hora), o que não permite ver muito bem a decoração do lugar com pinturas na parede.
Todas as mesas estavam ocupadas, por isso, é o tipo de lugar que eu recomendo com certeza fazer uma reserva antes de ir para não dar de cara com uma fila de espera (bom, tem gente que curte esperar no bar enquanto beberica um drink, não sou muito desse tipo, por isso, não recomendo).
Depois da mesa pronta e de curtir o couvert delicioso, fomos escolher os pratos. O cardápio é bem elaborado, com vários ingredientes «complexos». Eu gosto mais de pratos tradicionais, por isso, fiquei um pouquinho desapontada por não ver coisas como molho bolonhesa no menu. Mesmo assim, decidi dar uma chance aos pratos e pedi uma lasanha com carne de porco moída. Estava DIVINA. Uma das melhores lasanhas da minha vida.
Meu marido escolheu o nhoque, com largos pedaços de mussarela e um molho de tomate feito perfeitamente, sentimos que ambos acertamos na escolha.
A carta de vinhos é bem elaborada, com preços dos mais variados. Pegamos uma garrafa não tão cara e ficamos satisfeitos.
Fechamos com uma sobremesa compartilhada, pois os pratos anteriores haviam sido muito bem servidos e encerramos a noite.
Realmente, um lugar muito agradável para se conhecer.

Super cute restaurant, friendly service, and very comfortable inside, but the food was just okay.
Our group of four people ordered two appetizers to share– BREAD WITH OIL & SUN-​DRIED TOMATOES: fairly large loaf of soft white bread to dip into oil/​sun-​dried tomatoes mixture; BURRATA with bread, olives, and cured meat: friend said the burrata was good (I didn’t have any), the rest I thought was okay; SALAD of field greens and endive: decent, but endive were cut into too tiny pieces, would rather have whole leaves to cut on my own while eating for a bigger bite and more flavor; FRUTT E ‘MAR squid ink pasta with prawns, mussels, clams, and calamari: very seafoody flavor which was tasty, but the squid ink pasta was chewy and very sticky… it stuck to my teeth (inside my mouth, on my front teeth, just everywhere on my teeth!) so many times throughout the meal that it was quite annoying… too glutinous, which isn’t good! Other dishes that my friends ordered were the linguine with clams and pappardelle with beef ragu. They didn’t comment on them. We didn’t order any dessert, but the waitress brought over panna cotta for us to share. I read Unilocalers who had nice things to say about the panna cotta. PANNA COTTA: my favorite item of the night, it was served with berries
I was very disappointed at the squid ink pasta, especially since it is one of the most popular/​supposedly most delicious items there. Perhaps other pastas are much better, but I’m not dying to come back. I really wanted to love this place, too :’(

Squid ink pasta.
I was just about to end my review with the sentence above. The squid ink pasta is just amazing, comes with a plethora of baby clams in shells and just made right. I wasn’t hungry and I was planning on only eating a little bit, but I ended up leaving the plate clean as if it just came out of the dishwasher. The sauce isn’t too heavy or too creamy, seemed just right to me. Everything tasted great and I would definitely get it again. However, it would be nice if they ordered grated Parmesan cheese or pepper when the food comes out.

I went here as a special occasion a few months ago and was greeted by who I assumes to be the owner of the restaurant. The atmosphere is welcoming and has the essence of a traditional Italian restaurant.
We first ordered the beef carpaccio and the salmon crostini which was absolutely delicious. For the entrée I had the Tagliatelle Ragu while my boyfriend had the Frutt’ ‘E Mar, which were both incredibly rich and hearty, yet the fresh pasta tied it all together. After the huge and satisfying portion, the owner personally came buy to give us a complimentary panna cotta with fresh berries.
I will definitely be coming here again!