2 posts tagged “4230 18th street”
Quite suddenly last week the restaurant Bullshead, located across the street from Delano's IGA, shut down and vacated its space. The sign posted in the window blamed the closure on a lost lease, but gives no further details on the sudden closure.
This was a shocker for us, since Bullshead always seemed to have a good flow of customers in to sample its buffalo and non-buffalo offerings. It had the advantage of having more than one San Francisco location, theoretically giving it some of the advantages of a (mini) chain. Another point on its side was that it was one of the few restaurants in the Castro dedicated to red meat, making its closure just one week before the Hairrison Street Fair even more ironic and poignant.
So during my years visiting and living in the Castro this location has now seen 4 restaurants:
- Bullshead
- Tallulah
- Due Ragazzi
- Ristorante Incontro
Is this another cursed location for small businesses?
Finally, the title of this post is a reference to my little bit of idiocy dating back from when this restaurant opened. I saw the sign, and in my mind read it like "Bull-shead". Never mind that "shead" isn't a word, I guess I just have a profane mind.
Bullshead, we're sorry to see you go, and we're curious what brave soul is going to give this odd space a try next.
A little more than a month back, the Bullshead restaurant moved into the space across from Cala Supermarket at 4230 18th Street. The Bullshead is a local mini-chain, with its original location on Ulloa Street at Claremont, and it might finally be the business which can stay alive at this presumably poisonous location.
When I first came to the Castro about 10 years ago, there was a quiet, little Italian restaurant at this location called Ristorante Incontro. That name apparently means "hidden restaurant" in Italian, and the label was quite apt as many people didn't even realize that there was a business here. The awning and trees screened the storefront from the street, and the sign and the interior were understated (read, bland). We liked the place because it was so quiet and the food wasn't bad, but frankly I'm surprised that it lasted as long as it did because it seemed empty most of the time.
After a few years Incontro finally went under, and the next entrepeneur, seeing that an Italian restaurant had failed in this spot of course did the natural thing to do ... and opened another Italian restaurant in the exact same location! The next incarnation was Due Regazzi, and the restauranteur at least had the good sense to remove the obscuring trees and awning, brighten up the interior, and put up an eye-catching sign on the large panel windows. The owner was obviously very proud of the place, but it turns out that he was not a chef himself and probably for that reason the food was never very good and the restaurant never clicked with diners. We gave it two chances but the place disappointed us both times, and left us sure that it was ultimately doomed. It closed after less than a year.
Next up was Tallula, an Indian Tapas place. Tallula was actually around for a couple of years, and I thought it was going to survive in spite of the mixed reviews I heard from friends. The place was redecorated into a subcontinental-chic date restaurant, with exotic star-shaped tables and fabrics draped everywhere. One comment I heard from multiple people was that the place was expensive and the portions were small, but still I thought on style alone the place would be able to last. But sure enough, a few months ago the Tallula sign came down and a real estate sign and butcher paper went up.
Finally this summer Bullshead arrived, and immediately was crowded with customers. I was pretty shocked at first, but then found out that the original Bullshead is apparently very popular, so this restaurant came with a built-in client base.
The most notable thing about Bullshead (aside from its bold choice of orange for its color scheme) is that a good part of the menu is devoted to buffalo meat. The place calls itself a steakhouse, so there is of course a lot of beef on the menu, but the standout items are the buffalo burgers. Take a gander at the Bullshead website and you can see this lovely bit of propoganda about the presumed beneficial aspects of buffalo meat:
• Buffalo meat has fewer calories and less cholesterol than chicken, fish, or ostrich.
• Buffalo has 40% more protein than beef and contains much less fat.
• It is the only red meat that is non-allergenic.
• It is the only mammal not to contract cancer.
• Buffalo was the main diet of the Plains Indians who: never had cancer, never had heart disease, and lived to be 85 to 90 years old AND would have lived to be 125 with adequate dental care. * Eating 5 oz. of buffalo, 3-4 times a week can help most people reduce LDL cholesterol 40-45% over a 6-month period.
• It does not taste like wild game meats. It does taste like the finest quality beef you remember from your childhood.
Reading this you would imagine that doctors should start prescribing buffalo burgers to their angioplasty patients. Who knows if it's true, but in a city of vegans, it's refreshing to find a place so in love with the idea of digesting meat as a pathway to health.
