Much like they did to incredible success on New Year's Eve 2011, married chef-partners Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski have chosen the end of the year to debut their second restaurant, The Progress, next door to their highly acclaimed and still hard-to-get-into State Bird Provisions. And, much like the menu at State Bird, the food at The Progress will be hard to define with any easy, hyphenated fusion of national cuisines, owing to Brioza and Krasinski's immense talents and love for the melting pot of ethnic influences you can find just touring around this city.

The new project has been in the works at least five years, and we first heard about it in early 2013. And part of the reason it took so long is that it's a significantly bigger restaurant than the diminutive State Bird, and it was built out in what was once a movie house called The Progress Theatre.

As they tell the Chronicle in a big cover-story profile from Sunday's paper, the chef couple had the idea for The Progress well before they came up with the innovative, dim sum-style cart-service restaurant that became State Bird. The original inspiration, after a trip through Latin America, was for a restaurant where all the food was served family-style, with condiments on the side, in the style of communal dishes served in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. But they won't, of course, limit themselves to Latin cuisines, and the Asian influences that pervade the food at State Bird will find themselves into this menu to.

“The theme of the Progress will come from Italian cooking and Chinese cooking, with Middle Eastern meze and a Japanese minimalist sensibility," Brioza tells the Chron, laughing at the Portlandia-esque absurdity of that mashup. But, he says, when it comes to trying to define their influences "We are all of the above."

The exact opening date of The Progress, and when you'll be able to make reservations, hasn't quite gone live yet. But stay tuned, or check their Twitter here.

The Progress - 1525 Fillmore Street near Geary - Opening this week