San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Popular Oakland brunch spot brings old favorites to new S.F. location
Xica’s chef-owner Maria Elena Esquivel serves counter-service lunch, brunch menus
On any given weekend in Oakland, chef Maria Elena Esquivel’s Mexican American brunch spot Chica was packed. The tables inside the small, 6-year-old business were covered with plates full of huevos rancheros and Esquivel’s popular chilaquiles — making Chica’s closure in September a surprise for many a regular.
“People really went out of their way to come and dine with us, even though we were in this very small cafe that was kind of out of the way,” Esquivel recalls.
After a brief hiatus, Esquivel launched her restaurant’s new chapter. The business resurfaced recently as Xica in San Francisco, where she is taking over the expansive former home of Italian restaurant Il Fornaio near the Embarcadero. There, Esquivel will continue to offer her most popular brunch offerings, with her saucy chilaquiles leading the charge.
The restaurant is still a reflection of Esquivel’s
Chicana upbringing, experiencing Mexican customs and dishes at home while engaging with a diverse cultural landscape around her native Oakland and the greater Bay Area. The counter-service brunch menu points to this movement between cultures with dishes like pozole, chicken and waffles and eggs Benedict.
Coffee from Proyecto
Díaz Cafe, a San Leandro micro roaster delivering seasonal batches of singleorigin beans from Mexico, is available through brunch and lunch hours. Special drinks include a mazapan latte and a dirty horchata.
Xica offers a counterservice lunch menu side by side with brunch. Classic Mexican items like tacos, quesadillas and
“Mexi-bowls” — filled with Mexican-style rice, beans, vegetables and meats — that first drew folks to the earliest version of the restaurant are all available.
The new restaurant is at Levi’s Plaza, the 9.4acre office campus with 18 businesses, including the headquarters of Levi Strauss & Co., with roughly 3,400 employees. The surrounding park space was designed by noted landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.
The 5,000-square-foot restaurant, many times larger than her 20-seater Oakland restaurant, has a total of 130 seats across its main dining room, outdoor plaza, bar area and a private dining room. The 85-seat dining room features a large mural depicting several narrative and cultural scenes that are personal to Esquivel: her mother laughing with joy; a water goddess representing movement and power; a monarch butterfly flying from southern Mexico through an invisible border into the golden poppy fields of California.
For Esquivel, the move to Battery Street is its own homecoming. The eatery began as Chica in 2015 as a fast-casual outfit out of a window on nearby Green Street, selling tacos, burritos and Mexi bowls that were a hit with the nearby plaza’s workers. She moved to the Oakland space in 2016, closing last fall to prepare for the move to the bigger space.
Esquivel is starting with a Monday-Friday schedule and working up to weekend service. Dinner, which will be full service, comes next. For its full bar, Xica will stock a selection of womenowned and Latina-owned mezcal and Tequila labels such as Yola Mezcal. In the same vein, plans for wine offerings center women winemakers and local winemakers.
“They’re people who share our values. That’s huge for us,” Esquivel said.
Packing the new restaurant is a tall order, but Esquivel hopes to make her new dining room as lively as her old Oakland spot.
“We just want to make this space vibrant and welcoming. We want to make you feel like you’re coming into our home,” Esquivel said.
Xica. 1265 Battery St., Suite 100, San Francisco. Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Dinner and weekend hours coming soon. Xicasf.com