News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
Jeff Banker moved to San Francisco on December 31, 1997, ringing in a new year and a new life as the chef he always knew he would become. He found a job at Postrio, Wolfgang Puck’s Union Square hot spot, and an apartment on Bush Street, not far from a popular neighborhood restaurant called the…
By Chris Barnett It’s a simple Victorian storefront at Octavia and Bush, but the building housing Baker & Banker has a notorious past. Vintage San Franciscans will remember the spot as Robert Restaurant Francais during the 70s and 80s — a small and stylish place with a popular appetizer not listed on the menu. One…
A new cafe and wine bar — Fat Angel — is now open in the Fillmore Jazz District behind Starbucks at 1740 O’Farrell. And it’s promising to be a neighborhood place. “Fat Angel was born out of a passion for the Fillmore District,” say the owners, who live nearby and have made the neighborhood a…
Q & A | RUTHE STEIN From February 4 to 11, the Mostly British Film Festival comes to the Vogue Theater on Sacramento Street. It’s the brainchild of longtime Chronicle movie writer and editor Ruthe Stein, who’s just back in town from the Sundance Film Festival. Tell us about this new film festival coming to…
Initial reports said parking was being banned on long stretches of Fillmore this week because a movie was being filmed starring Brad Pitt — or maybe it was Matt Damon. But it turns out something even bigger is in the works: easier parking. Or so they promise. City crews are installing sensors on the pavement…
A rare Franciscan manzanita long thought to be extinct was transplanted to a protected location in the Presidio this week after it was discovered along the Doyle Drive rebuilding project by a biologist who happened to be driving by. “It’s an incredible find, like Christmas morning when you’re five,” says Mark Frey, an ecologist with…
Check out these stunning images of an upscale soul food restaurant called Mississippi Blues designed for the Fillmore Jazz District by hot-shot architect Stanley Saitowitz. “Like the river, a single table meanders through the space — here everyone sits around and eats as a family,” reports Arch Daily. Unfortunately, it’s old news, says Eater SF:…
AT 9 this morning, Vivande opened its doors to the public for the first time in three weeks. At 11, an auctioneer began selling the furnishings and equipment. Most of the two dozen people milling around seemed to be dealers in used restaurant supplies, although there were a few neighbors, too. Back in the kitchen…
Neighborhood physician Dr. Eduardo P. Dolhun is with a team of doctors in Haiti treating earthquake victims. Here is a portion of his first dispatch from the front: “Within a matter of minutes we were presented with a wide assortment of severe illnesses, all of them traumatic and now nearly six days old. “The first…
A local gallery is presenting “Theophilus Brown: Nudes,” spotlighting one of the pioneers of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which helped change the course of art history in the 1950s. Brown, now 90, moved to the neighborhood in 2001. He still works daily in his nearby studio and recently joined a new drawing group. “I…