San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The biggest closures of the year.
Which bygone Bay Area business will you miss most?
A number of Bay Area restaurant newcomers garnered national attention in 2018: Angler, Dyafa, Che Fico, Birdsong, Bar Crenn, Nyum Bai.
That said, the restaurant world is not without balance. Every flurry of notable openings over the last 12 months was bookended by closures. Some of the closures were neighborhood spots like Russian Hill’s Stones Throw or familiar mini-chains like Pizza Orgasmica, while others were longer-standing operations like the Oasis Beer Garden of Menlo Park.
Among the year’s biggestname closures was Sammy Hagar’s El Paseo in Mill Valley. The Red Rocker, who had already split from original El Paseo partner Tyler Florence, cut his losses over the summer, saying that El Paseo had “become far too time consuming” for him.
Other high-profile spots to shut down — or announce plans to do so by the end of the year — include Dirty Water, the 3-year-old, $4 million restaurant and bar in the MidMarket neighborhood, and Theorita, one of the year’s most anticipated openings. The latter was the sister Divisadero project to Che Fico, widely seen as one of the hottest restaurants in the city.
But it wasn’t all glitz and glamour for closures this year. Some of the hardest hit were businesses with deep roots in specific Bay Area communities, a category led by the closure of Gangway, San Francisco’s oldest continuously operating gay bar.
Locol, the fast food project from San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson and business partner Roy Choi, shut down its retail operations this year, which included two Oakland restaurants. The brand was unapologetic in its focus on supporting neighborhoods of color. Backed by two star California chefs, Locol wanted to revolutionize the fast food business.
Soul food shifted in the Bay Area this year, due in large part to the closures of Brown Sugar Kitchen, the beloved West Oakland restaurant by Tanya Holland, and Farmerbrown in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
Both had their own followings but each was trying to find more accommodating confines in similar situations. Brown Sugar Kitchen is expanding to Uptown Oakland, the San Francisco Ferry Building and the Oakland International Airport. Farmerbrown, meanwhile, is living on at the San Francisco International Airport.
La Victoria, one San Francisco’s first Mexican-owned food businesses, closed after 67 years in the Mission. Legal and financial chaos plagued the business for years before the building hit the market for $3.4 million. Cinderella Russian Bakery is trying to move into the location.
Napa Valley said goodbye to Terra, a Wine Country institution for three decades. Redd closed after 13 years in Yountville. Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen shut down over the summer; a month later, it was in the hands of restaurateur Joel Gott.
Sonoma County, meanwhile, is losing Shed, an award-winning restaurant and marketplace. Co-owners Doug Lipton and Cindy Daniel said their business saw a notable drop after the 2017 Wine Country wildfires. (See Tara Duggan’s story on page 8.)
But even though San Francisco and Wine Country lost their fair share of stalwarts, it was the East Bay that seemed to be hit the hardest.
In Berkeley alone, the 12year-old ice cream outfit Ici Ice Cream closed its doors without warning, as did the city’s 128year-old Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto and the 50-year-old Hs Lordships at the Berkeley Marina. Brennan’s in Berkeley shut down in August after 60 years. Nearby in Oakland, Camino, Russell Moore and Allison Hopelain’s pioneering, firefocused restaurant, closed this month after 10 years of business. It is being replaced by an outpost of the Chicago-style pizza chain Zachary’s. Camino joins Mexicali Rose, the 91year-old business that was one of Oakland’s oldest restaurants, as an East Bay favorite that didn’t survive 2018.
Meanwhile, Preeti Mistry’s Navi Kitchen shut down in Emeryville. With Mistry’s former Juhu Beach Club now home to FOB Kitchen, the year has left one of the East Bay’s most talented culinary minds without a brick-and-mortar.
Only time will tell what 2019 brings.