The strangest thing about lunch at A16 was the coincidence that our waiter there had been our waiter the previous night at Orson. Fortunately, he's a really good waiter. He steered us well at Orson, had good suggestions at A16, and recommended some other places to try (including Front Porch, where we ended up Saturday night). A16 is known especially for their pizzas, though we were anticipating the meatballs, since E's dad had actually made their meatball recipe before and it was great. Of course, meat-lovers that we are, we were happy to discover they had a charcuterie selection. On our waiter's recommendation we tried the house-cured ciccioli, which is almost more of a pate than what you'd usually think of as a cured meat (here's a description of the process). This one was soft and sort-of spreadable, though not as much as a pate, more somewhere between sausage and pate. Regardless, it was really good; especially if you don't think about exactly what pig parts might be in there. It also went well with their really really good table bread, which had a nice thick crust and soft inside.

For our main courses, we had:
- Pork meatballs braised in tomato with basil and grana padano. These were amazingly light and fluffy meatballs, with a great pork flavor, and just enough tomato and basil to complement without overwhelming. The texture was great, though personally I prefer meatballs a little more dense.
- Pizza salsiccia - fennel sausage, rapini, red onions, mozzarella, grana padano, garlic, chiles. The crust on this pizza was very good, thin and crispy. I usually don't like the bitter-ish greens so wasn't crazy about the rapini but didn't mind it. The sausage was good and fennel-y.
- Huckleberry sorbetto, fresh yogurt gelato, honey almond gelato. We had originally passed on dessert, since we were planning a trip to Bi-Rite later, but our waiter knew it was E's birthday and brought us these three treats with a candle. All three were good, and were especially good together. The yogurt stood out though just because the flavor was so fresh and clear. I didn't know what it was when I took my first bite and it was a yogurty taste explosion.