San Francisco's first deaf-owned restaurant, and the only deaf-owned-and-operated restaurant anywhere in the country, Mozzeria, will celebrate four years in business this December. As of last year, they just added a food truck to the mix, bringing their Neapolitan pizzas to people who might be too shy to come to the restaurant, where all the staff is deaf, and where you often have to write your orders down.
This week we get this lovely little video produced by The Small Business Revolution all about Melody and Russell Stein's labor of love in the Mission, which is in part a meditation on deafness and deaf peoples' position in society in general.
Interestingly, as KQED reported back in 2011, Melody is the daughter of SF restaurateur Francis Tsai, who relocated his family from Hong Kong in order to enroll Melody and her younger brother (also born deaf) at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. He ran two successful branches of a restaurant called Wu Kong in Hong Kong, and he opened another here. He also owns the Market Street building that was once home to Mecca and more recently Gingerfruit and Shanghai.
Mozzeria - 3228 16th Street between Dolores and Guerrero - Reservations here