Celebrities are dining about town for Super Bowl week, a gluten-free Italian restaurant comes to the Richmond, and a bakery expands in North Beach, all in This Week in Food.
The team behind pinseria Montesacro, Gianluca LeGrottaglie and Viviana Devoto, are closing their four-year-old Marina location (3317 Steiner Street), and rebranding their 343 Clement Street space, known since it opened in 2024 as Bettola, as Clementina, an entirely gluten-free Italian restaurant. As Tablehopper reports, LeGrottaglie and Devoto's daughter has celiac disease, and they've adapted and discovered new ways to make delicious Italian food that is gluten free, leading them to launch their gluten-free pop-up Alice at the Marina location. the pop-up is ending, but will be reborn as Clementina in mid-March, with an entirely celiac-safe kitchen — which should be welcome news for the gluten intolerant and celiac-afflicted around SF.
Tablehopper also brings word that well loved North Beach bakery Butter & Crumble will be opening a cake shop nearby on Telegraph Hill, at 301 Union Street, called The Cake Shop by Butter & Crumble. Baker and founder Sophie Smith announced the cake shop on Instagram, and says she hopes to be open by summer. "I am so excited to build the next iteration of creativity and playfulness for me and my team, returning to my first love CAKES, which created Butter & Crumble back in 2020 — from my apartment kitchen to the back of bars, with layers of buttercream and crumbles and crunches!!!" Smith writes.
Foreign Cinema has done an ice cream collab with Bi-Rite Creamery, and if you go to the Creamery or a Bi-Rite Market location you'll find, in the freezer case, pints of Caramel Swirl With Ras al Hanout. The ice cream has a serious spice kick from that 11-spice Morroccan blend, and it's tasty, and it's the latest in the Bi-Rite Creamery & Friends collab series.
The Mel's Drive-In location on Lombard Street suffered a serious kitchen fire Tuesday morning, and it is now closed indefinitely.
Horn Barbecue has been in some kind of spiral, even though chef Matt Horn just last week opened a new location in Fresno. The problem is, that was going to be the fourth location of Horn Barbecue, and at present it is the only one, with the Lafayette and Elk Grove locations both getting evicted, and the Oakland location "temporarily" closed now for several weeks.
Tablehopper had the news last week that another barbecue spot, Memphis Minnie's in the Lower Haight, is back open after closing in the fall. Longtime cook Angel Pech has taken over the business, after working in the kitchen (first as a dishwasher!) for 16 years. He actually left the place three years ago, and now he's determined to bring it back to its former self, as imagined first by barbecue aficionado Bob Kantor, who opened it in 2000.
And there have been a bevy of celebrity sightings around SF, as expected, this Super Bowl week. Pharrell Williams dined at San Tung in the Richmond on Tuesday. Actor Adam Devine, who took part in this a cappella flash mob of sorts outside the Ferry Building Wednesday, was at the Tight Ends & Freiends party at Public Works Thursday, where Travis Kelce was seen jamming out in the DJ booth to a remix of his fiancée Taylor Swift's song "Fate of Ophelia." Also, the great Bob Odenkirk, of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul fame, had dinner at House of Nanking in Chinatown last weekend (but he was here for SF Sketchfest, not the Super Bowl).
The Chronicle's Jess Lander has a quick guide to watching the Super Bowl at your local sports bar — and where some New England Patriots fans, like her, will be gathered this Sunday. The key point: Get there when they open.
Top image via Butter & Crumble/Instagram
