It's a week that has seen three high-profile closure announcements as well as fire-caused closure at Che Fico, but on the brighter side, Esme is now softly open on Divis, and we have more in This Week In Food.

Sadly, we kick things off in this week's column with four high-profile restaurant closures.

Late last week, Anomaly chef-owner Mike Lanham announced on Instagram that he was closing Anomaly "indefinitely" after June 20, citing his own health issues and "some family members I need to spend time with while I still have the opportunity." The ambitious prix-fixe restaurant in Lower Nob Hill opened in January 2023 after several years in which Lanham had wowed diners at his Anomaly pop-ups. The closure sounds fairly permanent, but Lanham says, "I will certainly be back to do something in the future."

And late Thursday, Shuggie's owners Kayla Abe and David Murphy announced that they are closing their much acclaimed Mission District restaurant on July 11. "It has been a slow build over the past year — seeing costs climb and patronage decrease," they write. "We have tried every conceivable pivot over our last 4 years to make a long lasting version of Shuggie’s." The restaurant took a major pivot away from it's original concept last year, having originally been named Shuggie's Trash Pie & Natural Wine, in order to offer more ambitious dishes and a tasting menu and shift the focus away from pizza and more toward the sustainable use of ingredients that would otherwise be discarded. But despite being named one of the best new restaurants in the country by Bon Appetit in 2023, Shuggie's has joined the ranks of acclaimed restaurants that still can't make the numbers work in SF.

Also closing, as we reported Thursday, is Park Tavern in North Beach, following a reopening about 18 months ago that brought in consulting chef Jonathan Waxman. Park Tavern's last day will be June 21.

And as of this morning we learned that Che Fico will be closed for some unknown period of time while its building is repaired after a Thursday afternoon fire. A fire department source tells SFist that the damage to the restaurant's roof and HVAC system were significant.

In brighter news on the Divisadero corridor, Esme, the much anticipated new bistro in the former Ragazza space from Pearl 6101 parter Susan Dunn, softly opens this weekend, with reservations still not yet available online (check back here in the coming days). Tablehopper reports on the opening menu, which features classic bistro fare like steak frites and a roast chicken, as well as pastas like a linguini with clams, and starters like a potato pavé with caviar, chicken liver mousse, and a whole artichoke served with saffron aioli.

And a new location of Super Duper has opened in the former Japantown Burger King space at Fillmore and Post streets. We first reported on the move by Super Duper in February, marking the burger chain's ninth location in San Francisco, and its 21st location in the Bay Area.

The Chronicle reports that troubles continue with the acclaimed Horn Barbecue, and chef-owner Matt Horn has shuttered his six-month-old location in his hometown of Fresno. This follows the closures of the original West Oakland location, and two others in Lafayette and Elk Grove, leaving only the seemingly part-time location in Old Oakland, in the former Matty's Old Fashioned space, still open, but only sometimes.  

Also, two well-loved, well established Mission District dive bars and music venues, the Make-Out Room and the Latin American Club, are both up for sale. As the Chronicle reports, longtime owner Martin Rapalski is selling both businesses, the former for $450,000 and the latter for $350,000, saying, "I have to retire eventually. I have been doing this for so long."

And Chronicle critic Cesar Hernandez (his title has quietly changed to Restaurant Critic from Associate Critic, FYI) has filed his review of Maria Isabel, the ambitious and upscale new Mexican restaurant from Mexican-born chef Laura Ozyilmaz and husband Sayat, who also own Dalida in the Presidio. Hernandez asserts that "no other restaurant in the Bay Area currently offers as much diversity of Mexican gastronomy than Maria Isabel," and he raves that the "aguachile is nothing short of a stunner," and the "most show-stopping dish" is the duck carnitas enmolada, which comes with a quartet of moles in stripes on the plate.

Top image: The caviar guacamole buñuelo at Maria Isabel, by Jay Barmann/SFist

Chef-owner David Nayfeld said in a social media video Friday morning that Divisadero hot spot Che Fico, which had a fire in a chimney flue Thursday, suffered some damage and will have to close for an indeterminate period of time.

SFist had the news Thursday afternoon of a fire at Che Fico, which began around 3:30 pm which an SFFD source said had originated in the kitchen's flue, and which reportedly led to significant damage on the rear of the building. The interior of the restaurant was, reportedly, not damaged, and no one was injured.

But what damage occurred was apparently significant enough to force the closure of Che Fico while building repairs take place. (The Chronicle reports via SFFD Lieutenant Mariano Elias that the fire began in the chimney of the restaurant next door, Foghorn Taproom, aka the former Little Star, however an Instagram post from Foghorn Taproom appears to contradict this, and Foghorn was able to reopen for business Thursday night.)

Firefighters reportedly had to damage the rear side of the buildings to extinguish the flames.

Nayfeld, who is in New York today for an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, confirmed in an Instagram reel, "We're going to have to close for a certain amount of time."

He added, "First and foremost I want to say thank you very much to our team. They followed all of our evacuation drills that we had been practicing, perfectly. They did a fantastic job, the leadership did a fantastic job."

Nayfeld also said it meant "so much in the moment" that, as the fire was happening, he heard directly from Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, among others, who pledged their support in helping the restaurant recover.

Che Fico debuted at 838 Divisadero in the NoPa neighborhood in March 2018 and quickly became one of the toughest reservations to get in town. Nayfeld gained some notoriety in the early days of the pandemic as he raised funds from some of his tech-wealthy investors to make to-go meals for people in need in the city, in addition to family-style takeout packages for regular customers, while the restaurant remained closed.

The Che Fico empire has since grown to include a second Che Fico in Menlo Park, Che Fico Pizzeria at the Chase Center, and the more Tuscan-influenced fine dining restaurant Via Aurelia, which opened last fall in Mission Bay. And last month the team opened a new, nostalgia-fueled cocktail bar downstairs from Che Fico Pizzeria called Golden Rule.

Another popular Italian restaurant in SF, Original Joe's, also suffered a kitchen fire three weeks ago, but they were able to reopen quickly.

Previously: One-Alarm Fire Breaks Out In Flue Connected to Che Fico Kitchen

Jollibee's much-anticipated Market Street location was nearing the end of San Francisco's years-long, draconian permitting process when a noise compliance issue surfaced, throwing yet another wrench into the company's already delayed opening plans.

Jollibee’s long-delayed Market Street outpost — slated to be the chain’s first San Francisco location in more than a decade — was on the brink of opening after years of stalled permitting, but a failed noise compliance test led to further delays, as the Chronicle reports.

As SFist reported previously, the Market Street Jollibee was initially slated to open in 2023, which got pushed to 2024 and later 2025. The restaurant, planned for the former Payless ShoeSource site at 934 Market Street near Hallidie Plaza, has reportedly been winding through city approvals since 2020, including historic preservation review, utility installation approvals, and coordination with multiple agencies due to its proximity to BART, Muni, and a dense residential corridor.

According to the Chronicle, the latest setback emerged during the health permit stage in January, when required noise testing of rooftop mechanical equipment flagged the installation as exceeding San Francisco’s strict limits for commercial properties. Independent acoustical consultants found the units — including a heat pump and refrigeration condensers — produced several decibels above allowable daytime and nighttime thresholds when measured against surrounding ambient conditions along Market Street.

Because the equipment sits adjacent to residential units and overlooks Hallidie Plaza, the city required mitigation before the health permit could move forward. Jollibee has since worked on insulating the rooftop machinery and exploring compliance options, including potential variances, but a second round of testing was reportedly compromised by procedural errors, forcing further delays.

The Chronicle reports that the project also faced earlier delays, including utility approvals from PG&E, coordination with BART for construction equipment staging, and a Board of Supervisors vote tied to underground infrastructure near the public plaza. City departments have also reportedly acknowledged internal missteps and miscommunications on both sides as contributing factors to the prolonged timeline.

One official noted that the project could be used as a “case study” for improving the city’s permitting process. There is still no confirmed opening date for Jollibee’s Market Street location.

As the Chronicle reported last week, Jollibee, which currently operates 12 Bay Area locations, is opening 15 additional stores in Northern California over the next eight years.

Previously: That New Jollibee Is Indeed Coming to the Former Payless Shoe Store at Market and Fifth Streets

Image: HONG KONG, HONG KONG - JUNE 14: A Jollibee Foods Corporation's mascot is seen at one of the company's restaurant in Hong Kong on 14 Jun 2018. As of April 2018, JFC had a total of about 1,200 Jollibee outlets worldwide, with presence in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Hong Kong, North America, and Italy. (Photo by S3studio/Getty Images)

It's always sad when a bustling restaurant that felt like it had been there forever loses its mojo and withers away. But that was the case for North Beach's Park Tavern, not just once, but twice.

On its Instagram page on Wednesday, the Park Tavern team announced the restaurant would be closing for good on June 21. The closure comes following what seemed at the time like a promising revival of the place in November 2024, at the hands of original partner James Nicholas and celebrity chef Jonathan Waxman, after the pandemic, and a legal battle between the partners, had previously appeared to doom the place.

"It has been our privilege to serve this community and be a part of this special neighborhood," the post reads. "We are deeply grateful to every member of our team — past and present — and to the loyal guests and friends who have made Park Tavern such a meaningful place over the years."

Nicholas had taken over the lease in 2024 after, a year earlier, his ex-wife and onetime business partner Anna Weinberg had been evicted from the space in a dispute with the landlord. Weinberg had tried to hold onto the business in a divorce that saw the splitting up of the couples' restaurant businesses, which included Marlowe, The Cavalier, Leo's Oyster Bar, and Tosca Cafe, and a remodel had occurred in the space after the pandemic, followed by a brief and unsuccessful reopening in early 2023.

The 2024 reopening under Nicholas and Waxman — the beloved original menu had been created by Marlowe/Cavalier chef Jennifer Puccio — was met with a disastrously bad review from then-new Chronicle critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan, in which she accused Waxman of serving her "the worst steak of my life," and noted that the menu was anchored by "historical reenactments" of well known Waxman dishes, rather than having any particular direction of its own.

Waxman was also, essentially, serving as a journeyman consultant, maintaining his two restaurants in New York including the still beloved Barbuto, and lending his name to the revival.

Service after this reopening was also spotty, and it just felt like the energy and magic of the place had long since left the building.

When Park Tavern opened in the fall of 2011, in a space facing Washington Square Park that had long been occupied by another neighborhood icon, Moose's, it was met with immediate raves and constant crowds. Weinberg's talent for creating a moment and a mood were well on display, and Park Tavern very quickly became like San Francisco's answer to Balthazar and other buzzy, well established brasseries that feel like have always existed.

Puccio's deviled eggs, Marlowe burger, and poulet rouge (a riff on Marlowe's terrific poulet vert), and her talent for creating crave-worthy dishes, helped keep crowds coming back for years.

But restaurants have lifespans, crowds move on to shinier things, and the pandemic was not kind to anyone in the restaurant industry. And try as they might, the owners never recaptured the spirit of the place in its post-pandemic revivals.

"Over the next two weeks, we'd love to welcome you back one last time. Join us to raise a glass, share a meal, and celebrate the memories we've created together," the restaurant team said in the Instagram note.

In any event, it remains a well-located restaurant space with great potential, and it's likely to get snapped up before long.

Previously: North Beach's Park Tavern to Be Reopened Former Partner In Restaurant, With Original Chef

Bar Malone's has softly opened in the former District space on Townsend Street, Goop Kitchen is opening a second location in SoMa, and there may be some movement, finally, over at Anchor Brewing, all in This Week in Food.

Bar Malone's, named for "spirit animal" Sam Malone, the fictional barkeep of Cheers fame, has softly opened in the former District space near Oracle Park, at 216 Townsend Street. As Tablehopper reports, owners Gabriel Freiberg and Eric Passetti (Natoma Cabana and Yerba Buena Bar) have opened a casual neighborhood hang with a slightly retro vibe — and a design by restaurateur Anna Weinberg, in her first solo design effort. District had some good, brick-walled, industrial charm, and the horseshoe bar has been kept, now with a new laquer top and brass trim. And in addition to cocktails, there is a menu of comfort food including a burger, fried hot honey chicken thighs, and steak frites.

(Also new and near the ballpark, which we noted two weeks ago, is Casa Sofia, from chef Carlos Altamirano.)

Goop Kitchen, Gwyneth Paltrow's healthy takeout concept, is expanding with a second location in SoMa, taking over the former Spice Kit space at 405 Howard Street. As the SF Business Times reports, Goop Kitchen continues its expansion in NorCal with a planned location in Oakland, and after opening its first SF location at 60 Morris Street in SoMa late last year.

We had the news earlier this week that a former Benu chef, Brian Shin, has teamed up with Min Park, the restaurateur behind Menlo Park's Yeobo, Darling and SF's Itria to open Ajae on Oakland's Piedmont Avenue. The menu will focus on Korean comfort classics, and the duo have not yet revealed the exact address, but look for that to likely open by the end of 2026.

After two years of zero movement over at Anchor Brewery, the new owner, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, has quietly registered a new business document at City Hall for Anchor Brewing Company, as Hoodline reports. Ulukaya was the winning buyer of the brewery and its assets when it was auctioned in May 2024, and at the time he suggested it might reopen by Christmas that year. But instead, two years have passed and former employees have likely moved on, and we await word on when the place might start brewing once again.

Also this week we had the sad news that acclaimed Richmond District ramen tasting menu spot Noodle in a Haystack has closed. Owners Clint and Yoko Tan, who have run the restaurant mostly just the two of them for the last four years after hosting pop-up dinners at their home, are now planning a fast-casual place at Thrive City, by the Chase Center, focusing on the "dry" variety of ramen called mazeman. That will be called Mazé, and it will open sometime this winter in the former GluGlu wine bar space.

And Eater drops back in on Liholiho Yacht Club for a mini-review, finding the place just as charming and delicious as when it debuted 11 years ago. And, they note, you should probably take advantage of the $80 chef's tasting option that's not listed on the menu, which requires full table participation.

Top image: Photo via Bar Malone's/Instagram

Nopa, the bustling restaurant at the corner of Divisadero and Hayes in the Western Addition sub-neighborhood that came to be known as NoPa (north of Panhandle) two decades ago, is celebrating 20 years in business this week, and they had a big bash to mark the occasion on Thursday night.

It is hard to imagine the Divisadero corridor as it was in 2006, long before people were talking about its "Valencia-fication," seven years before Bi-Rite arrived, and back when it was only beginning to show signs of the neighborhood main drag it has become. Sure, Popeye's has been there the whole time, and 20 years ago you could already get good deep-dish pizza (Little Star, RIP) and seafood (Bar Crudo) there. But the stretch of Divis between Haight Street and Geary Boulevard was mostly known for autobody shops, gas stations, and the car wash where everyone brought their Burning Man RVs post-playa.

Nopa played a pivotal role in raising the profile of the area, which chef-owner Laurence Jossel called one of the "last affordable neighborhoods" in the city at the time the restaurant opened. And the restaurant helped usher in an era in which San Francisco's profile on the national food scene grew significantly — becoming a city where even neighborhood restaurants like Frances and Delfina were turning out world-class food, earning widespread attention, and in the case of Frances, a Michelin star.

Jossel and former business partners Jeff Hanak and Allyson Jossel (his ex-wife) had been on the hunt for a restaurant space in 2004, with the idea of opening an all-day restaurant.

"Allyson and I would sit across the street at the Beanbag Cafe, which is still there, drinking coffee, talking about all these spaces around town we'd looked at, and right across the street from us was a For Lease sign on an old laundromat, which was also prior to that was a bank," Jossel says. "We knew change-of-use permits were a big thing, but out of nowhere we thought, 'Wait a minute. Let's just be curious.'"

The partners then contacted the landlord, who also owned the Mission Street Denny's in SoMa, and they found out that the space could be used for a number of things including a restaurant, without a change-of-use. After a meeting over Grand Slam breakfasts, the landlord gave the trio a great deal on the space with a handshake, and after an extensive buildout, Nopa was born.

Jossel still laments the "tiny kitchen" that they designed, which has remained unchanged, but, he says, "I wanted a rotisserie, I wanted a fryer, I wanted a smoker, and a wood grill, and I kinda got everything I wanted."

"I think I wrote the menu two days before we opened," he says. Staple dishes like the country pork chop and the house-ground burger have been hits since the restaurant's earliest days. And it's been an expensive burger from the beginning — Jossel believes it was priced at $18 back in 2006, which was pricy back then, and it's now a $29 burger, with high-quality beef, he says, being more expensive than it's ever been.

Nopa was known from the beginning for being a place you could go and have a burger and a cocktail even if it was after midnight — something uncommon in sleepy San Francisco, and even less common now.

"We kept on running into people in the industry who lived in that neighborhood, and we thought, 'Wait a minute, if we can't do breakfast and lunch, late night makes sense in that space.'"

For the first 14 years of Nopa's existence, its kitchen was open until 1 am seven nights a week, turning it into a nototious industry hangout for folks getting off their shifts at other restuarants with saner hours.

"It took a toll on the staff," Jossel says. "We couldn't just keep having people clocking off at 3 or 4 in the morning all the time."

Similarly, brunch, which was a wildly popular thing at Nopa up until the pandemic, has become a less feasible thing to pull off, staffing wise — though Jossel and his wife and current business partner Holly Rhodes have discussed possibly, down the line, sacrificing Sunday night dinner service to make brunch work again.

"Brunch is a labor in itself," Jossel says, noting that they always made their own bread for the French toast, and made their own bagels, etc. "It just asks a lot of the team. Getting people to eat brunch? No problem. Getting people to work it and have a good attitude about it? That's a problem."

The ownership of the restaurant changed after the pandemic hit, with Jossel deciding to buy out his former partners and keep the place going, for the sake of the neighborhood and his employees. And after a year of doing takeout and adding a parklet like everyone else, Nopa has chugged right along, and there's a line just about every night before the doors open at 5:30 to snag a bar seat or a spot at the communal table.

When asked about the secret to Nopa's success and longevity, Jossel says, hands down, it's consistency.

"Every single day we taste every single dish as a team, in the kitchen, and then as a team in the dining room. And if that pork chop doesn't taste exactly as it did 19 years ago, something's wrong," Jossel says. "If you want people to come back again and again and again, I think consistency is a big factor in that."

Jossel also points to the menu, with new dishes appearing nightly since the restaurant's earliest days, driven by his thousands of shopping trips to farmers' markets and a commitment to serving seasonal, organic ingredients whenever possible.

The pandemic also added a new staple dish to the menu, the Morroccan-spiced Yaya's Fried Chicken.

After expanding with Nopa Fish at the Ferry Building last year, the next big project for the Nopa team is a farm that will produce ingredients exclusively for the restaurant, on a property that Jossel has acquired in Sebastopol. But, he says, there will be a big learning curve.

"It's a lot harder than I thought it would be," Jossel says. "I never took for granted that farmers were brave and smart. But, man, it is a ton of work to put food in the ground and harvest it and clean it and get it to its perfect ripeness and grow it properly."

Jossel says that about a half-acre of land will hopefully begin producing lettuces, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, and more for the restaurant in the coming year or two, which he hopes will "push the menu forward."

When it comes to reaching the 20-year mark, Jossel also points to the boon of being centrally located and becoming a go-to dinner spot for hundreds if not thousands of neighbors.

"I would guesstimate that maybe 60 percent of our guests each night are return guests from the neighborhood," he says. "You just become part of their routine, and that's great."

Nopa - 560 Divisadero Street - Open Mon-Thur 5:30 to 10 pm, Fri-Sat 5:30 to 11 pm, and Sunday 5:30 to 9:30 pm - Reservations

An acclaimed Japanese prix-fixe restaurant that most of us were not lucky enough to dine at, Noodle In a Haystack, has closed, and its owners are going the fast-casual route in the hopes of finally turning a decent profit.

It's a familiar refrain in the San Francisco restaurant scene, where the rising costs of everything, from ingredients to rent to labor to healthcare, have made many small businesses unsustainable. The couple behind the highly acclaimed, 12-seat, Richmond District restaurant Noodle in a Haystack have shut their doors after four years because their tiny operation no longer made financial sense.

Clint and Yoko Tan tell the Chronicle this week that they shuttered the always sold-out restaurant last month because "It felt like we’ve been running in place the last few years," and the physical toll of running the tiny restaurant, just the two of them, had become too much, and was generating too little profit. This is despite charging $306 for their nine-course ramen tasting experience, with beverage pairing, having a waitlist for seats that was 10,000 people long, and not having any other full-time employees besides themselves.

And the closure comes despite an early rave review by the Chronicle's Soleil Ho, and being named one of the best new restaurants in the country in 2023 by the New York Times, and Bon Appetit.

Restaurant profit margins are notoriously thin, and in an expensive city like San Francisco, they can get even thinner — unless you can accomplish things at scale, and with multiple turns per night. The Tans had just two seatings per night, and sometimes were only open two nights per week, sometimes three. Nonetheless, Yoko Tan reportedly landed in the hospital twice because of the physical toll — Chronicle critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan noted last fall that when she finally snagged a reservation after two years of trying, the restaurant had to reschedule at the last minute because Yoko Tan had come down with COVID.

Now, though, more San Franciscans will be able to try the Tans' food, at least one type of ramen dish anyway. They are set to open a fast-casual restaurant this winter at Thrive City, by the Chase Center, called Mazé, specializing in the "dry" ramen style known as mazemen.

As the Chronicle notes, Mazé is moving into the 30-seat space that had been occupied by the wine bar GluGlu. And the Tans plan to serve a couple versions of mazemen that appeared on the Noodle in a Haystack menu, including creamy tan tan, and a spicy version made with yuzu kosho, chicharrón, lime, smoked fish powder, and charred pork belly. There will also be fried chicken, inspired by Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, and the naturally leavened nama doughnuts that Yoko occasionally made for the restaurant as well.

More California-influenced, seasonal versions of mazeman may come as well, with one they mention to the Chronicle involving tomato dashi and burrata.

According to the description on the Chase Center site, "Mazé is derived from the Japanese word meaning 'to mix' or 'to blend,' paired with Men, meaning 'noodle.' Together, the name refers to a style of ramen focused on mixing noodles with sauces, oils, toppings, and textures before enjoyment. Rooted in recipes developed over the last decade, the concept emphasizes bold flavors and carefully sourced ingredients."

Reportedly, the Tans are also on the hunt for a second space in the city for a mid-range restaurant of some kind, though they are not announcing any details on that.

A restaurateur with several recent hits under his belt has teamed up with a chef with SF fine dining cred to open a new Oakland restaurant focused on Korean comfort food and home-style cooking.

The restaurant will be called Ajae, and restaurateur Min Park — of SF's Itria and Menlo Park's acclaimed Yeobo, Darling — and chef Brian Shin are aiming for a late 2026 opening at an undisclosed address on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, as the Chronicle reports.

Shin is an alum of Benu and the former In Situ at SFMOMA, both led by Executive Chef Corey Lee. And as the Chronicle notes, he'll be following in the path of other Benu alums James Yeun Leong Parry, who opened the acclaimed Happy Crane last year, and Alan Hsu, who along with partner Sarah Cooper opened Sun Moon Studio in West Oakland, earning a Michelin star and a rave from the Chronicle that named it the best new restaurant of the year in 2024.

Ajae will center its menu on Korean comfort dishes like the rice soup called gukbap, and other things familiar to Korean restaurant menus, but Park tells the Chronicle, with "Brian’s special skill set they get taken to the next level."

Shin has also worked at Chicago’s Alinea, which has three Michelin stars, and he's done comfort food at The Snug in Pacific Heights, but it sounds like Ajae will be more ambitious than that, if not less casual.

Piedmont Avenue has long had a strong dining scene, with the classic spot BayWolf giving way to The Wolf in the last decade, and chef James Syhabout's Commis being the only Michelin-starred restaurant in all of Oakland until Sun Moon Studio came along.

Recent vacancies on the avenue include the former Pomella space at 3770 Piedmont, and breakfast spot The Crepe Pan (4184 Piedmont), which just closed earlier this year.

Stay tuned for more details as we know them.

Asia Live is debuting next week in Santa Clara, Jules gets a boost from the New York Times, Saluhall loses its last original vendor, and Oakland gets a new queer bar, all in This Week in Food.

Asia Live, the grand an ambitious food hall in the mode of Eataly from George Chen of China Live fame, is getting set to open at the Westfield Valley Fair model in Santa Clara next week, on June 5. Chen tells the Chronicle that Asia Live harkens back to his first SF restaurant, Betelnut, in that it connects foods from across Asia and celebrates street food especially.

Saluhall, the IKEA-adjacent food hall on mid-Market, has slowly added a couple new tenants in recent months, but the last of its original vendors, Curry Up Now, has left the building. As the Chronicle reports, the only two food vendors now operating as Ingka Centres seeks new management are Smish Smash and Filipino sandwich counter Izzy & Wooks — but we've recently learned that the central counter space downstairs will soon become a branch of Oklava Café, and a new beverage services company has been hired to take over the three bars in the space.

The latest update of the North America's 50 Best Restaurants list is out, and Saison clocks in at 22, Benu at 33, Atelier Crenn at 44, and Sons & Daughters at 45. And Healdsburg's SingleThread comes in at number 16.

Jules, the hit pizza spot in the Lower Haight, just landed on the New York Times' "25 Best Restaurants In San Francisco Right Now," in the latest update of that list. Owner and pizzaiolo Max Blachman-Gentile and his staff are celebrating, obviously, as Jules just celebrated its one-year anniversary this week, and as the new NYT listing puts it in the good company of Liholiho Yacht Club, Flour + Water, Four Kings, and Zuni. (And it will also mean that tables will remain hard to get, with a tourist factor added.)

International Smoke, the barbecue restaurant opened nine years ago by Ayesha Curry and Michael Mina, has quietly closed. As Eater reports, the restaurant space in the base of Millennium Tower is undergoing a renovation and will reopen as Neighborhood Test Kitchen, a revival of Mina Test Kitchen, the revolving pop-up venue that Michael Mina launched a decade ago. And Mina says the closure comes in part because of the impacts of the construction around the building to fix the tower's sinking problem.

A new queer bar is opening tonight in Oakland, in the former Friends and Family space at 468 25th Street. It's called There There, and as the Chronicle reports via new oener Alli Li, there are some new bleacher seats in the "cruising corner" on the back patio, and drinks are priced in the range of $12 to $17.

Top image via Instagram

Wednesday marked the anniversary of the big day that women won the right to work as bartenders in the state of California in 1971, and in celebration, the city has provided a list of over 50 women-owned bars to support — every day of the week.

Wednesday’s event, dubbed “The Equal Pour,” recognized the 1971 California Supreme Court decision that struck down the state’s ban on women bartenders, as KPIX reports.

Over 50 San Francisco women-owned bars reportedly participated in the citywide celebration led by the Horseshoe Tavern. Brooke Janser, who co-owns the Horseshoe with two other women, said the celebration was also meant to highlight the role women continue to play throughout the city’s bar industry.

“This is personal to me because I've been bartending in this city and state for 23 years and I co-own [the bar] with two other women,” Janser said, speaking to Broke-Ass Stuart. “I think it's important to see how many women-owned / female-forward bars and restaurants exist, as they constitute a huge part of our industry and night life.”

Mayor Daniel Lurie stopped by the tavern Wednesday night to recognize the anniversary, while guest women bartenders took shifts behind the bar, per KPIX.

According to Broke-Ass Stuart, women entered the bartending industry in large numbers during World War II as they took on jobs traditionally held by men, earning the nickname “Bessie the Bartender.” But after the war, several states moved to ban women from tending bar, including California, which kept its restriction in place until 1971.

The California Supreme Court ultimately struck down the ban after a legal fight — reportedly involving a topless San Francisco bar and the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Women were broadly banned from tending bar across the country in the post-Prohibition era. New York State also had a ban on female bartenders that was similarly struck down in 1971.

Top image via the Brooklyn Public Library

A confusing fact about the Original Joe's brand in the Bay Area is that it actually belongs to two unrelated families — and if you bring in other "Joe's" restaurants in Marin and elsewhere, the picture is murkier.

The original Original Joe's in San Francisco has long been divorced from its once closer cousin in San Jose. But now that the San Jose Original Joe's has gone on the market, it's conceivable the brand name could be unified once again, though no one has suggested yet that this will happen.

As the Mercury News is reporting, Original Joe's in downtown San Jose just celebrated its 70th birthday, and the brothers who own the restaurant have decided to sell and retire. Brad Rocca, who at 68 is two years younger than the restaurant, and his brother Matt Rocca, 70, say they have no plans to close the restaurant, and they are looking for a buyer "who loves Joe’s as much as we do to take it into the next generation."

Their father, Louis Rocca Jr., was the son of one of the original owners of Original Joe's in San Francisco, which opened in 1937. Louis Rocca Sr. opened the San Jose restaurant in 1956 for his son to run, and it was ultimately purchased by his sons, who worked there since they were teenagers, in 1980, serving a similar — though different — menu of Italian-American classic cuisine as the San Francisco and Daly City restaurants. (The SF and Westlake branches are now owned by John and Elena Duggan, who are also third-generation owners, descended from Rocca's SF partner, Croatian immigrant Tony Rodin.)

A few years later, the Roccas sold their share of the San Francisco and Daly City restaurants to the Duggan family, and they've been separate operations from the San Jose restaurant ever since.

The Chronicle's resident historian Carl Nolte retold the whole Original Joe's saga last month, which includes the devastating 2007 fire that destroyed the original Taylor Street location in the Tenderloin, and the brand's resurrection by the Duggans in North Beach in 2012, followed by a splashy renovation of the Daly City branch, and the opening last year of a new Walnut Creek Original Joe's.

The siblings have also expanded the brand with Little Original Joe's, opening a small, takeout-focused location in West Portal, followed by a buzzy Marina location that opened in 2024.

Wouldn't they want to reunite the businesses and bring the San Jose location back into the fold? We'll have to wait and see.

Just to avoid confusion, Marin Joe's in Corte Madera, which always had similar branding, has never been related to Original Joe's, and was owned by a different family altogether who sold it to new owners last year. It remains closed for a major renovation. Also, San Rafael Joe's? No relation.

A new Napa restaurant is on the way from SPQR's Matt Accarrino, Casa Sofia Kitchen & Bar just debuted near the ballpark, and Che Fico's cocktail bar Golden Rule opens this weekend next to the Chase Center, all in This Week In Food.

Coming later this year in Napa will be a new restaurant from SPQR and Mattina chef Matt Accarrino, called Vetra, at the new boutique resort The Elene — on the Solano Avenue property in Napa that was formerly the Oak Knoll Hotel. The Elene was supposed to open this summer but appears delayed until fall or winter, and with it will come Vetra, an all-day restaurant with what sounds like a casual but upscale dinner menu that leans into Accarrino's Cal-Italian talents, per Eater. Dishes he mentions include a large-format lasagna, other fresh pastas, bone-in Wagyu porterhouse steaks, roast duck and lamb, and fresh breads including piadina, the northern Italian flatbread he makes at Mattina. Accarrino will also be overseeing the menu at a café on the property that does not yet have a name.

Casa Sofia Kitchen & Bar, the new spot in the former Brixton space in SoMa from chef Carlos Altamirano and his wife Shu Altamirano, opened last night, May 21. As Tablehopper reports, the menu melds influences from Peru, Mexico, and Argentina, and includes good pre- and post-ballpark food like housemade empanadas, baby BBQ pork ribs, and fried chicken. The space also boasts two private dining spaces, and you can see menus and find reservations here.

Also opening this weekend, on Saturday, is the first cocktail bar from Che Fico's restaurant group, called Golden Rule. It is opening Saturday at Thrive City (Chase Center), in the space below Che Fico Pizzeria, and as bar director Danielle Peters-Clossey tells the Chronicle, the goal was to be "nostalgic" and "festive" with the drinks, given the location at a sports and concert venue. The menu includes things like the MIP ("most improved player"), a nod to Veronica Burton of the Golden State Valkyries, which features gin, mezcal, vermouth, and musk melon, along with a spritz of Hubba Bubba bubblegum essence; and the Bi-Coastal, featuring rum, cold brew, espresso liqueur, and banana cold foam. Also, there are mini freezer martinis, and housemade pizza rolls for snacking.

Hayes Valley fine dining spot Nightbird just announced a special Pride Month menu, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to The Trevor Project. The six-course menu from chef Kim Alter features dishes representing each color of the rainbow Pride flag, including an opening dish of scallop with saffron and a nasturtium farro bread, representing the colors red, orange, and yellow. Find reservations here.

Much loved Hayes Valley bakery Loquat is prepping a second location, as the Chronicle first reported earlier this month. Owners Tal Mor and Jodi Geren and pastry chef Kristina Costa are bringing their love of Jewish diaspora baking to the Inner Richmond, with a plan to open a second Loquat at 4555 California Street, at 18th Avenue, currently a location of Beanstalk Cafe, sometime next year. The new location will allow for some expanded bread making capabilities, and there are plans to have grab-and-go challah sandwiches and more.

And a new Turkish bakery-café called Oklava Café is opening soon on the ground floor of Saluhall, the IKEA-adjacent food hall at 945 Market Street. As the Chronicle reports, owners Aziz Aslan and Elif Uzun opened the first Oklava in downtown Palo Alto three years ago, and they also own the bakery-restaurant Turquaz in SoMa, which opened last year. An opening date for the new café has not yet been set, but it is taking over the central counter space previously occupied by Cheezy's Artisan Pizza.

Top image: A dish of Wagyu beef at Nightbird. Photo by Adahlia Cole

The Michelin Guide has put out a second list of "new discoveries" ahead of the release of the updated 2026 California guide in June, including 21 restaurants across the state.

In keeping with the world's insatiable need for content updates, the esteemed Michelin Guide now releases multiple updates per year for each of the cities and regions for which it now publishes guides. These include semiannual announcements about "new discoveries" to the upcoming guide, which can serve as a preview of the new restaurants that inspectors are considering for higher honors like stars or Bib Gourmand inclusion.

And today we get the latest of these roundups of new additions, which is something that started five years ago, and allows for guide additions to be highlighted ahead of the new guide and stars announcements — and also maybe allows them to make a show of noticing restaurants they had previously ignored.

For the Bay Area, the latest additions by Michelin inspectors deemed "culinary gems" are Maria Isabel — which had just opened when the last additions to the guide were announced — Kitchen Istanbul, Via Aurelia, and Minnie Bell's Soul Movement.

Minnie Bell's is notable because it likely shows that inspectors hadn't made it there yet in the two years that it's been open. The quality of fried chicken and soul food dishes like braised oxtail has remained great and unchanged over that span. And Kitchen Istanbul has been buzzed about for several years, in the Chronicle and elsewhere, getting a formal, rave review back in October, so maybe the inspectors only recently took notice and got over there.

Via Aurelia, the upscale Mission Bay restaurant from the Che Fico team, had been open for six months when the last batch of guide additions was announced in March, so it also could be a case of inspectors only recently making it there.

Additionally, Oakland's Joodooboo and Popoca are among the "discoveries," along with the new high-end tasting menu spot in Los Gatos, Vicinity. The remaining 14 restaurants on the list are in Southern California. See the full list here, along with capsule reviews.

The full new guide for California is scheduled to arrive in late June, as it did last year.

The list of Bay Area restaurants with Michelin stars was nearly unchanged in 2025 from the year before, with only two restaurants debuting on the list — Sonoma's Enclos, which debuted at the two-star level, and Oakland's Sun Moon Studio, which debuted with one star.

New restaurants that could be in star contention include Wolfsbane, Restaurant Naides, and Le Cigale — all three of which were on the additions list in March — as well as Maria Isabel, Via Aurelia, Happy Crane, and Vicinity in Los Gatos.

Previously: Five Bay Area Restaurants Added to 2026 Michelin Guide

Photo of the caviar guacamole buñuelo at Maria Isabel, by Jay Barmann/SFist

Original Joe's really needs to beef up its fire insurance and clean its kitchen flues. The flagship location in North Beach, which moved there after its original location burned down, suffered a small fire on Wednesday night — the owners' third fire in 20 years.

San Francisco firefighters were called to the scene at Union and Stockton streets just after 8 pm Wednesday after heavy smoke was seen rising from the roof of Original Joe's.

As the SFFD reported, the fire was in a chimney or exhaust flue, coming out of the kitchen, and it was contained as of 8:19 pm.

Part of Union Street and a section of Stockton Street were both temporarily closed for the firefight and cleanup, and the restaurant and a neighboring building were both evacuated during this process.

As KTVU reports, it remained unclear Wednesday night whether the restaurant suffered any serious damage. Original Joe's has not posted any update to its social media.

No injuries were reported and the SFFD said the building was turned back over to the owners Wednesday night.

This flagship Original Joe's opened in this space (formerly Joe DiMaggio's and, even earlier, Fior d'Italia) in 2012. The restaurant relocated and reopened here after an October 2007 fire shut down the original location on Taylor Street in the Tenderloin. Third-generation owners John and Elena Duggan, who are brother and sister, have since expanded the business to include Little Original Joe's locations in West Portal and the Marina, as well as the revamped Daly City Original Joe's, and in 2024 they opened Elena's, a Mexican-American restaurant in West Portal.

A third Original Joe's location that opened last August in Walnut Creek also suffered a kitchen fire that shut it down just days after its grand opening. That location reopened in October.

We'll update this story once there is word about whether the North Beach restaurant will be open as usual tonight.

In a sign of weak demand for restaurants overall, the once highly valued "full" liquor licenses in San Francisco, which could only be obtained on the secondary market due to a longstanding legal exception, are now worth about a third of what they were before the pandemic.

You might not think that the market price for a liquor license would fluctuate, or that the price could tank in a matter of just a few years. It's not like people have stopped drinking — Gen Z maybe has — and it's not like the local restaurant scene is in the doldrums like it was in 2021.

But as the Chronicle reports, much like BART ridership, things have rebounded in the liquor license market since the dark days of the pandemic, they just have not rebounded back to where they were, by a long shot.

The coveted Type 47 liquor licenses, which once traded hands in San Franciscofor $250,000 or more, are now valued at around $100,000, the Chronicle explains. That's still far more than the $20,000 that the same license would cost in other parts of California. But it marks a serious decline in value that is being driven by a decline in demand.

"The price of a liquor license is an index of what people believe about San Francisco and the restaurant industry," says Thad Vogler, formerly the owner of Bar Agricole, Trou Normand, and two other bars, all of which had licenses he'd paid a quarter million dollars for, speaking to the Chronicle. "They’ve stayed down. They’re not going up."

A broker who has traded in SF Type 47 liquor licenses for years, Cameron DeRuosi, confirms this to the Chronicle, saying that the rock-bottom price of $95,000 in late 2025, but has come up slightly since then.

And, DuRuosi adds in speaking to the Chronicle that such slumps in the price of licenses usually presage a larger recession on the way.

The reason that liquor licenses ever climbed to $250K or higher is because of the unique position San Francisco has in the state's liquor license economy. The number of licenses in a given jurisdiction was capped back in 1939 at one for every 2,000 residents, but when that rule was set, San Francisco already had around 1,000 bars and restaurants serving booze, so they were all granted licenses rather than be forced to shut down, and ever sense, no new licenses have been issued except under a recent state program to help under-represented or struggling neighborhoods.

The Chronicle pegs the current number of Type 47 licenses in SF at 741 — these licenses are geared toward restaurants, but many bars that hold them serve food as a requirement for serving booze. The state ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control agency) says that there are between 202 and 210 active Type 48 licenses in the city as well, and those are "On Sale - General" licenses for bars with no food requirement.

Whenever a restaurant closes, that license becomes an asset the owner can then sell. But with a glut of these coming available in the last couple of years, the price just ticked downward as the pace of new openings has not kept up, and demand went soft.

DuRuosi tells the Chronicle that just three years ago, in 2023, you still couldn't buy a Type 47 license for less than $230,000, so the price trajectory actually began in the pandemic hangover and not during the height of the pandemic itself.

Ironically, this past fall and winter, as these licenses hit their lowest price point in decades, the city was feeling like it was in a sudden restaurant renaissance, with a spate of splashy openings, like Via Aurelia in Mission Bay, Wolfsbane in Dogpatch, and Michael Mina's revamped Bourbon Steak at the St. Francis.

We'll have to wait and see what this year brings.

Previously: Lurie Gets His 20 New Liquor Licenses for Union Square, After Newsom Signs Bill Allowing These

Photo by Declan Sun