22 posts tagged “restaurant”
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.
OK, how can you take an interesting menu, helpful friendly service, an attractive storefront (two of them!), and two good locations and make them fail twice? I'm not sure, but I know someone you might ask for the answer to that...
I covered before the apparent business decisions that went into the closing of Malacca's 18th Street location, and its move to replace Crave on Market. Now it seems that the behind-the-scenes tumult is finally over as a hastily-scrawled sign in the window (two of them!) announces the end of Malacca, presumably for good.
We definitely liked the original Malacca -- which was artfully decorated, served a great brunch menu, and had an energetic helpful service staff -- and were sad to see it close. We were wary of the post-move Malacca which seemed to lack the clear Malaysian identity of the original, but at least the one time we visited the bartender was friendly and knew how to shake a good cosmo. We never got a chance to sample the food, but the quick reviews we heard from friends weren't encouraging, to say the least.
Well, that's one more restaurant and liquor license out there. Who'll be the next to jump into the fray? Situated under The Patio The Cafe bar, this would certainly be a great location for a late-night eatery.
Tita's, the quirky little Hawaiian restaurant on 17th Street, is boarded up now, and undergoing preparations for a new tenant. I chatted with a handsome guy who was darting in and out of the building a couple of weekends ago, and he said that a Filipino restaurant was moving in, with a target opening of late July. Following on the heels of Kapé around the corner on 16th, which is also Filipino-owned and features handmade empanadas, this area is turning into our own little Manila. If the permit application is to be believed, the new restaurant will be named Palencia.
The facade is still pretty shaky looking, so July might be optimistic, but then again A Bon Port opened pretty quickly as well so I'll stay hopeful.
This is one of the many off-the-beaten-track storefronts that we have around the periphery of the Castro. Without much outsider foot traffic it is hard for businesses other than laundromats and liquor stores to stay in business in locations like this, but let's hope these people know what they are doing and can make this a destination worth seeking out. Fingers crossed!
A few days the following sign appeared in the window of neighborhood greasy spoon, Welcome Home:
Maybe there were other signs that I missed, but this seemed like an awfully sudden closure, especially considering that the LGBT Film Festival and SF Pride are both coming up, both profitable events for the area restaurants. Strange.
I'm weirdly sad that Welcome Home is gone -- weird because I never once ate there. But still, it was a throwback to another time, and really embodied for me the Castro of the 70's and 80's which is rapidly disappearing.
When I first started coming to the Castro about 10 years ago, Welcome Home was one of a small group of restaurants that had a particularly homey, anachronistic feel to them. WH, The Cove Cafe, Little Orphan Andy's, and Hot & Hunky's (among others I have probably forgotten) all had a heavy, pan-fried, uncomplicated air that suggested that they'd been started by refugees from heartier, corn-fed parts of the country, and they were little oases of comfort in a foreign land. But married to the midwestern menu were distinctly gay touches -- The Cove's walls of beefcake(-ish) photos, Little Orphan Andy's draggy name, Hot & Hunky's bawdy name, and most of all, Welcome Home's hand-painted rainbow over its entrance.
So now the rainbow will be coming down. Our neighborhood isn't full of refugees anymore, and even the new arrivals probably left behind a strip mall of Olive Garden restaurants and Domino's pizza delivery instead of mom-and-pop diners. For them, Welcome Home is probably as alien as the seafood and Asian cuisine were to the gays who came 40 years ago.
Good-bye, Welcome Home! Thanks for welcoming so many folk over the years.
A wrap-up of small items that have been knocking around my camera's memory card for a few weeks now:
- Razors has been open and razoring away for a couple weeks now. This is the former location of ENZI salon, which is now up the street a couple blocks. I'm told that the owner of Razors used to be at Joe's Barbershop before deciding to strike out on his own.
- The perpetual garage sale at 530 Castro Street -- only the name seems to change, and did the latest incarnation even have a name? -- has sharpied an update on its "Closing soon" sign that the end is coming "June 15th or Soon" (sic). Note that I first reported this eminent closing back in freakin' April, so "soon" is a relative term for these people.
- Remember the grease fire at All-Season Sushi & Bar (or as we called it, "All Season Sushi Bar and Grill")? A quick peak inside the place reveals that much more is going on in there than repairs to the kitchen. It seems that a full remodel is underway. This photo is from a couple weeks ago:
- The Cove cafe is entering the late-night food market by staying open until 2 on Friday and Saturday night. They still aren't taking reservations for the high-visibility, window-side "attention-whore" booths though, so be prepared to wait.
- Bazouzi market and deli at the corner of 18th and Eureka has posted a notice announcing a change of ownership. I'm told that the couple who own the place have finally decided to retire. According to the posted announcement, the new owners are renaming the place Adorabella's, which is further evidence that all good store names are taken.
- A sign up at Off the Beading Path at 18th and Douglass (and nextdoor to the new location of ENZI) advertises a store-wide liquidation sale. I don't know if this is an indication that the owner is picking up his beads and going home -- or possibly to Fisherman's Wharf where he recently opened another store -- but generally store-wide 25-50% discounts are not signs of a bright future.
- I wrote about the changes over at the-cafe-formerly-known-as-Philz, but at the time had forgotten the new name. Well, the building is repainted now and the new sign is up. Welcome Bean Here, Brew That!. (ref. My comments above about the name Adorabella's)
Over the weekend I stopped by the newly renovated Harvey's for brunch, and it was like dropping by on an old friend -- one with a big liquor cabinet and a deep-fat fryer.
In spite of the major construction, on the surface little is changed. It's the same menu, the same staff, the same mysterious upstairs-around-the-corner kitchen. However, the place has been polished up with a more sophisticated color scheme and some richer finishes.
You notice it first at the entrance, where the walls are covered with a woody, rattan-like material on one wall and slick black tiles on the other.
Inside, the color scheme continues with the walls painted a rich caramel/tan color, and the bar and banquette upholstered with black leather (well, OK, a black leather-adjacent fabric).
The center-piece, literally and aesthetically, is the bar, which is the one area where the fundamental layout has changed. As before, there are high, round tables and low, square tables on the Castro side of the restaurant, and high, square tables against the banquette on the 18th street side. The two slightly-sketchy but hard-working bathrooms and the server's station are still in the back corner. But the bar which used to be a chevron jutting into the center of the room has been reshaped into a straight line against the back wall. This opens up the space considerably, and also allows for a more visually arresting design for the bar. A wide swath of the natural rattan shoots dramatically up the wall and onto the ceiling.
I am really pleased with the makeover, but mostly I'm pleased to have this neighborhood mainstay back. Looking airier and more inviting than even, it's a beautiful anchor to this high-traffic intersection. Well done, Harvey!
I have it on very good authority (OK, admittedly anyone who has time to email me tips isn't exactly a national security advisor, but still, I'm willing to report anything) that our semi-beloved Harvey's is reopening tonight with a party at 9pm! Reviews, photos, and a few bad puns to come! Stay tuned...
Today All Season Sushi & Bar had a grease fire which (partially) smoked out the clothing store upstairs and has at least temporarily shut the place down.
All Season is an example of that very San Francisco institution: a Japanese restaurant which predominantly serves Chinese food. And at one point in recent history were they unabashedly Chinese. But then they closed for renovations a few years back, some sake lanterns went up and "sushi" was added to the awning, and magically a month later they were a Japanese restaurant. Notably, the take-out area in front, which is fueled by the same kitchen in back, has stayed Chinese.
But I digress. We passed by today and came upon the aftermath of a fire. At this point it was mostly a lot of wet pavement, plus a ragtag pile of newpaper racks and decorations that had been swept out onto the sidewalk and gutter. According to a second-hand report, one of the waitresses said that grease on the stove (and not the deep-fat fryer) had caught fire. Delicious!
There was more obvious damage at the narrow storefront next door (really just a door) of the men's clothing store Aranciatamara. The glass door had been shattered, and the owner of Aranciatamara was carefully hammering out the huge shards of glass and trying to clean up his entryway. We asked him if his store itself had been damaged, and after eyeing my camera suspiciously he answered no -- just a lot of smoke.
I was relieved to hear that because, much like Michael J. and Company's upstairs salon, I think the odds are stacked against this clothing store. It would be awful if he had to suffer just because the grease had finally reached crisis level downstairs.
After talking to a few neighbors and overhearing other first-hand accounts, it sounds like the event was literally more smoke than fire. So probably All Season won't be closed long and will be back to selling that authentic deep-fried sushi soon.
The San Francisco Chronicle today published their annual list of the top 100 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 2 Castro eateries made the cut: Mecca and Chow. San Francisco has always had a reputation for having some of the top restaurants in the country, and the fact that this list covers a wide swath of land from Healdsburg in the north to Los Gatos down south out to Walnut Creek in the east bay makes the top 100 an even more exclusive club to join.
Mecca, a posh bar/restaurant on Market, conveniently located a couple of doors down from Eros, is an understandable candidate for the top 100 list. The couple of times we have been there the food has been thoughtfully presented, varied and interesting, and most importantly, tasty. And the space itself is modern and stylish, attracting a young, attractive crowd to the bar which takes up the center of the room. The biggest drawback is that because of the barful of young, attractive gays and straights dominating the center of the space, the restaurant is possibly one of the loudest spots on the face of the earth.
Chow is more of a head-scratcher. It's a fine enough restaurant, and for me it is a go-to spot for meeting people for lunch. It's right next to the Church MUNI stop, across the street from the huge Safeway parking lot, reasonably priced, and has a menu filled with fairly standard items. But is it really one of the top 100 in the Bar Area? In the Castro alone, I would rank it next to Luna and Nirvana among mid-priced restaurants, and I would put it behind the more high-end Catch and 2223. Any big Chow fans out there who can explain to me why it makes this list every year? What am I missing?
Overall, it's disappointing that the Castro doesn't have more restaurants on the list. For the long term health of the neighborhood, I think it would be good to bolster our reputation for something other than the whole gay thing, and good restaurants and bars are an area where we would have a good shot. I don't know what the city or the MUMC could do to encourage quality dining per se, but it is something to think about.
A few months back, a bright orange awning went up over the space next door to Lime announcing the arrival of a new restaurant, Barracuda. This space saw a revolving door of restaurants in the last few years, with the most recent concept -- a steak house proposed by the proprietor of Lime, Greg Bronstein -- never even making it to opening day. It was good to see something open up in the space that was distinctive and confident-looking, and it was also refreshing to see a Japanese restaurant open which didn't seem to be all about the sushi.
As you can see by the banner, the place describes itself as a "Japanese restaurant," but according to its website it more accurately "offers Japanese cuisine with influences of Peru and Brazil." Fusion! The website is quite beautifully done, and the samba playing in the background sets the tone for the restaurant (while additionally being incredibly annoying -- really, does anyone like websites that play music?).
We went to Barracuda with a large group not long after the place opened, and my capsule review is that it was "good, not great." That seemed to be the consensus of the rest of party too. The restaurant is stylish and the food was presented well, and my partner was quite smitten with the gorgeous host, but the food itself didn't seem quite worth the price. However, I do believe that it's not really fair to judge a place so soon after it opens, so I hope to give it another chance one of these days -- right after they fire that man-whore host.
(Just joking! I don't even know if he still works there or not, and I'm sure he's an honorable, upstanding restaurant-industry professional who just happens to be a man-stealing slut.)
So with that as background, fast forward to last weekend. We were making a rare shopping trip out of the city (support your local independent merchant!) and ended up at the Serramonte Mall down in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. And there, I was shocked to see a new restaurant opening up with a familiar name in a familiar font:
At first I wondered if it was a coincidence or if someone had stolen the name, but no, the official website lists the Daly City location as "coming soon."
I was thrown for a loop.
Why? Well, Serramonte Mall is a real suburban mall, and Daly City itself does not possess what you would consider a hip, sophisticated population. To me, the business model which would succeed in the urban fabuland of the Castro is very different from one which would work at Serramonte, nestled between a Lane Bryant and a Marie Callendar's. I'm pretty amazed that they would take the concept, menu, and art direction that was painstakingly (and expensively) developed for its first store, and not find a neighborhood where it would translate more directly, such as Union Street or even South Park.
Instead, they landed in a location where:
- the size of the restaurant is much larger;
- there is minimal foot traffic at dinner time;
- many more customers will be families with small children;
- alcohol will make up a much smaller percentage of their sales;
- and there are no other high-end restaurants nearby.
I mean, look at the website again. In the photo on the main landing page how many women can you count? And then in the photo gallery there are 7 food photos, of which 1 is a trio of martinis (a.k.a. the gay man's appetizer) and the other 6 are effete, bizarre, and beautiful sushi-esque creations. This is not a concept that is "mall-ready."
But before you get the wrong idea, I do hope they can succeed. I just hope that they don't get watered down by trying to appeal to both markets, and end up being a fusion of nothing. Maybe they're giddy with the success of combining Japan with South America, and now they think they can combine the Castro with South San Francisco, arguably a trickier combo.
In the meantime, I need to find out if it's safe to head back to the Castro location yet. Do you think they'll tell me how attractive their host is over the phone when I make reservations?
