This Week In Food: Bentornato, Che Fico

Che Fico reopens after its June fire, the Colibri folk are going Italian on Union Square, and Sebastopol's Psychic Pie is expanding to SF, all in This Week In Food.

In some positive news on the Divisadero corridor, Che Fico will be reopening a week from Sunday, on October 18, and reservations are available now. The restaurant has been closed since a chimney fire that occurred on June 11, which led to some extensive damage. But, thankfully, the closure only lasted four months, and chef-owner David Nayfeld says, "The outpouring of support was just tremendous." A block away, bakery-cafe The Mill remains closed after its late-June fire.

The family behind Mexican restaurant Colibri, which relocated from the Union Square area to the Presidio in 2022, is taking over the city-owned kiosk restaurant space on the Powell Street side of Union Square Park. Next year, they'll be opening an Italian grab-and-go concept there, La Piazza, serving pizza, piadina, and focaccia sandwiches, along with espresso drinks and housemade pastries, as the Chronicle reports.

In other exciting pizza news, the Chronicle reports this week that acclaimed Sebastopol pizzeria Psychic Pie is expanding its Roman-style pizza operation with Slice Wolf, a new pizza counter coming to San Francisco next year. The location is still TBA, given that they are in ongoing lease negotiations, but they will join two other pizza operations from outside the city, Berkeley's Rose Pizzeria and Oakland's Mama's Boy, in opening new SF locations.

The former longtime home of Revolution Cafe at 3248 22nd Street is becoming Ember Cafe, as the SF Standard reports, with an opening planned in mid-November. More recently home to Greek wine bar Ivory & Vine, the new cafe will keep some of the decor from that incarnation, including four disco ball chandeliers, and will serve lattes, cold brew, and cold-pressed tea during the day, with beer, wine, and spritzes on the menu in the evening.

We're late to this news, but three-year-old Cal-Italian restaurant The Rustic, which took over the longtime home of Chow on Church Street in May 2023, quietly shut its doors in early September. As Hoodline reported, there was a sign outside saying "temporarily closed until next week," but the place never reopened and the phone is now disconnected. Owner Zoti Ali Turap continues to operate Tavola Rustica in Larkspur, and an employee there said that the Church Street business had been sold to a new owner.

Tacos El Patron, which has been open now for a few weeks at 1325 Fillmore Street, had a line down the block on Thursday for their official grand opening, likely thanks to the offer of $1 quesabirria tacos. And as they announced on Instagram last week, they are seeking a Type 47 liquor license, which would allow them to have a full bar with real margaritas, etc., and they say they're a "serious buyer" and "ready to move forward" if anyone has a license to sell. (This plea seems like a positive sign given that just five months ago, those licenses were reportedly trading for fire-sale prices in SF and were readily available.)

The owners behind popular Mission District pupusa specialists Balompié Cafe have expanded for the first time to the East Bay, opening a new location in Richmond. As Berkeleyside reports, Mauricio Gonzalez and his wife, Deysi Ramos, live in Richmond, and decided to open a third location there, in a strip mall next to the almost shuttered Hilltop Mall, serving Salvadoran comfort classics. The menu, reportedly, is a bit more abbreviated than Balompié's two Mission District locations.

And the Chronicle is perhaps signaling a new pace for restaurant reviews, with one coming just a week after the last — perhaps they heard some complaints! Critic Cesar Hernandez has a new review of La Taqueria, the second starred review of the paper's new star-review era, giving the (arguably overhyped) Mission stalwart two stars (meaning "great") and calling it "among our very best burrito diplomats" in the city, and worthy of all its praise and guide-book cred. "The glory of La Taqueria’s burritos is in the simplicity of its riceless construction — meat, beans, salsa," he writes. "Without rice, they gain a lucidity that heightens the homey tenderness of slowly stewed pinto beans, the juiciness of carne asada that actually tastes like fire, the sting of salsa verde."