News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By CHRISTINE LUNDE On their honeymoon in Italy, neighborhood residents Olivia Dillan and Ben Balzer floated by Marco Polo’s house on a canal in Venice, which inspired Dillan to leave the tech industry behind. Then serendipity took charge. Three weeks after Dillan and Balzer decided to start a shop of their own, the space at…
SALOONS | Chris Barnett Legend has it that Liverpool Lil’s, the saucy saloon and gastropub just outside the eastern gate of the Presidio, is named after a trollop who prowled the cobblestone streets of Britain’s notorious port city entertaining affection-starved sailors and dockworkers in the dark corners of ale houses. Not exactly true, confesses Ralph…
A SAMPLING TOUR | DONNA GILLESPIE Chocolate chip cookies abound at many of the bakeries in the Fillmore, and I’ve long been a fan of this particular type of cookie. So I went on a sampling tour — one cookie per day — to compare and rate the chocolate chip cookies in the neighborhood. First,…
ROAM, WHICH JUST opened its doors — and windows — at 1923 Fillmore Street, is not your run of the mill burger joint. And business partners Lynn Gorfinkle and Josh Spiegelman have spared no detail to make sure that’s true. “We wanted to create a better-for-you burger concept using high quality ingredients,” says Gorfinkle. “It’s…
FORMER FILLMORE resident Andrea Ballus had been scoping out the neighborhood for a location for her fourth Sift Cake and Dessert Bar. She found the perfect setting when Dumplings & Buns abruptly left the cozy space at 2411 California, just around the corner from Fillmore, and opened her doors on August 23. Ballus opened her…
“PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING I ate over several visits to State Bird Provisions — the nine-month-old restaurant that Stuart Brioza and his wife, pastry chef Nicole Krasinski, run in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco — had me clamoring for more. And to think the place almost never happened.” Bon Appetit: “The Hot 10: America’s…
By CHRIS BARNETT Fillmore Street’s oldest coffeehouse is gussying itself up, and there’s a whiff of concern in the air. Royal Ground, a funky haunt for neighborhood caffeine addicts for 25 years, last month rearranged its milk and sugar stand and its refrigerated juice display. Hardly a full facelift, but some customers were flummoxed. Loyalists…
IT BEGAN in a former dry cleaners on Pine Street in 1999. “I just have this thing about bread,” said Pascal Rigo, the Frenchman realizing his dream by launching his own boulangerie and living upstairs above the shop. “The flavor, the smell, the texture. I can’t tell you why. It wasn’t as if I came…
Two new restaurants have opened in the neighborhood in recent weeks, and still more are in the works. A Turkish restaurant, Troya, has taken over the prime space at 2125 Fillmore from Citizen Cake, which fell short of its great expectations and closed late last year — although star chef Elizabeth Falkner, now in New…
DESIGN | Chris Barnett San Francisco graphic designer Christopher Simmons has a long list of powerhouse clients including Facebook, Microsoft, Wells Fargo Bank, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente and the Nature Conservancy. So why in an uncertain economy would he take a flyer on two Fillmore startups that sell Vietnamese sandwiches and rotisserie chickens? For Simmons, owner…