It was cleaning lady day, so we planned an escape whereby
we'd leave when she arrived; lunch would be followed by a
trip to Costco, and then we'd sneak back, hoping she'd be
gone by then.

Lilli researched reputable places that were far away but not
too far away and came up with a pizzeria in Encinitas called
Buona Forchetta, supposedly established by some world-renowned 
pizzaiolo with a traditional Neapolitan oven brought over brick 
by brick or something like that. I noted that it closed at 3,
and it was already 1, and the cleaning lady hadn't shown up,
and she took that to be me gloating, but I noted that if we
hustled, we could make it there in time to be served, so we
left early and an hour later we were there.

No indoor seating is offered any more, and everyone is put in 
what was once an alley between the restaurant and next door. 
Hey, you do what you gotta do. Problem was that there wasn't 
much ventilation, and there were flies that must have 
remembered the days when the garbage lived there.

Our waiter was a caricatured Italian - but perhaps a northern
one - who was amusing enough and did a good job.

Tiberio Montepulciano 16 seemed to be an okay deal (less than
twice retail), and I snapped it up; it was plummy and spicy
with berry undernotes, a not simpleminded but not inaccessible
wine. Even the flies liked it. They kept dive-bombing my glass
(ignoring the water glass next to it or the lovely puddles of
condensation on the table), and one of them made quite a 
splash. It started struggling around, and I fished it out with
the point of my knife and chid it ("spit it out, ye bastard!")
and let it fly away to steal more wine another day ... oh, 
shoot, it was back in minutes, and this time I let it drown 
before calling the waiter over for another glass.

A strange little appetizer of barely-cooked lentils in olive
oil flavored with rosemary, garlic, and ginger; this came 
with slices from a baguette. Pretty decent, but the question
is what's a pizza parlor doing with baguette?

Lilli ordered the pizza with genoa salami, pepperoni, sausage, 
onions, and bocconcini after rejecting the idea of margherita
as too simple. It was artisanal in size (small) and price
(large) but not I thought in competency (medium). She, not 
unmoved by the reviews, thought it was terrific.

It was about a 10" pie somewhat scorched (artisanally) on the
bottom and with big blobby (artisanal) bubbles along the
edges. The dough was basically competent but rather salty,
which is not great for me and which I dislike anyway. Its
sauce, not herbed enough, not cooked enough (for me - some
like the bright red stuff), too salty, heavily cayenned,
which I didn't mind but found weird. The meats were decent,
nothing earth-shattering, and pretty abundant. Sliced
young mozzarella was quite good, the fresh sweetness almost 
balancing the substantial saltiness of the whole. With a
deeper and less salty sauce and a bit less! meat, it might
have made a respectable meal.

After wondering about several things, which I resolved to
investigate another day if the place was impressive enough
(eggplant Parm, egg pasta with Bolognese, mussels, etc.).
I ordered the safe lasagne to see if I could learn anything
from the place (no): lots of meat in the sauce, ground beef
and crushed pork-beef meatballs. A reasonable amount of
mozzarella but oddly neither besciamella nor ricotta, which
might have been okay if it were not for that the sauce was 
rather acidy and again quite salty, rather like any ordinary
restaurant red sauce, nowhere so good as mine (which is far
from classic, as mine has much more fat, garlic, and cooking
and rather less salt). A monster portion, and helping Lilli
gallantly with her abundance of food, I took 2/3 of it home.

After the salt, I needed something sweet, and after inquiring
after some things I didn't recognize (these were all out of
stock) decided on the panna cotta, a tough ham-handed version
topped with three somewhat shriveled but tasty blueberries
and garnished with butterscotch and strawberry syrup drizzles.

The bill was high for pizza, reasonable for dinner.

Impeccable bathrooms.

Lilli said she'd come back; I will make an argument for the
joint near where she used to work, half the distance and also
half the price (though the wine is bad).