Washington has designs on redoing restaurants
Doug Washington has long been one of the best front-ofthe-house operators in San Francisco, a hospitality standout in a world where the maitre d’ is a vanishing breed.
Along with longtime partners Mitch and Steve Rosenthal, he runs three San Francisco restaurants — Town Hall, Salt House and Anchor & Hope — as well as a Portland, Ore., restaurant.
But for his next venture, Washington is pursuing his love of designing restaurants.
He has started a design and development company with longtime friend and creative director Stellah De Ville. The company, named Claro, will specialize in redesigning and reconcepting existing restaurants.
“I love the idea that instead of closing a restaurant, someone could do a turn and make it successful,” says Washington.
Perhaps just as notably, the fledgling company will also build its own projects and
“I love the idea that instead of closing a restaurant, someone could do a turn and make it successful.” Doug Washington, whose new firm, with partner Stellah De Ville, will specialize in redesigning restaurants
operations.
Washington has signed a lease for a 3,500-square-foot space in Oakland (3265 Grand Ave.), in the same building that houses Charlie Hallowell’s weeks-old Penrose, where he’ll open a marketplace — and then some — tentatively named Grand Market.
Washington envisions it as a celebration of food, with individual retail counters for charcuterie, cheese, pastries, ice cream and bread. Prepared foods and baked goods will be made on site. Hallowell and company will bake the bread, while items like charcuterie and cheese will be curated.
Seating will be in an expansive outdoor area with lights and heaters that will also house stations for beer, wine and coffee; the coffee service will come courtesy of San Francisco’s Linea Caffe.
The build-out will take months, but the market will open this month in a limited fashion, serving coffee and light food during the day, and switching to wine, beer and light food during evenings.
Washington remains a partner with the Rosenthals in the other restaurants.
Lady’s night: New Yorkers Ken Friedman and chef April Bloomfield resurrected North Beach’s Tosca Cafe last year, and turned it into one of San Francisco’s most popular restaurants.
In 2014, they’re taking on another neighborhood institution: The Lusty Lady (1033 Kearny St.).
The Lusty Lady was a gritty, 30-year-old strip club and peep show that made national headlines when it closed in August, thanks to its status as the city’s first worker-owned strip club, and the first one in America with a dancers union. And it just happens to share back walls with Tosca.
If all goes to plan, the new Tosca owners will reopen the space as a bar. The entire venue has been gutted and the name will change, but Friedman and Bloomfield hope to play off the traditions of the Kearny Street location, like having “peep shows” reveal bartenders shaking cocktails, and a dimly lit bar area backed by brooding neon signs. High Standard: Kelsie Kerr has been a quiet presence in the East Bay food scene for years. She’s cooked at both Chez Panisse and Cafe Rouge, among other places, as well as coauthoring both volumes of “The Art of Simple Food” with Alice Waters. With her forthcoming Berkeley take-out spot named Standard Fare (2701 Eighth St.), Kerr hopes to bring good food into Bay Area homes — via custom-made ceramic dishes.
Standard Fare will offer full meals ready to be heated up. The clay pots and cazuelas will be made by nearby Jered’s Pottery, and customers will have to return the vessels in two weeks, or they will be charged — a system similar to video rental shops.
The idea is to cut down on paper waste, while being able to heat up meals easily — and have the meal look good in the process.
Standard Fare is scheduled to open in mid-February. Flying the Coop: Over in Lafayette, the Cooperage American Grille (32 Fiesta Lane) is a massive 310-seat American tavern due next month, with some San Francisco restaurant veterans involved.
It’s the brainchild of partners Andrew McCormick, who owned City Tavern for 17 years, and chef Erik Hopfinger, who worked at a number of San Francisco restaurants. The menu will revolve around rotisserie meats and other classic Americana dishes.
Jim Maxwell of Architects II (One Market, Tribune Tavern) is designing the restaurant, which was formerly Petar’s. He’s paying homage to the old Petar’s back room with an updated back bar area with wingback booths, club chairs and fireplace.
The name, by the way, is also a tribute of sorts. It’s a reference to the long-gone Cooperage Restaurant in San Francisco, which was the first restaurant opened by Bill McCormick, Andrew’s father.
McCormick would go on to partner with Doug Schmick and open 93 restaurants (!) under the umbrella of McCormick and Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants. Not a bad career. Diners behaving badly: In response to a Scoop item last month about a diner getting busted after swiping a steak knife from El Paseo, a reader writes in to share another wonderful tale of thieving gone awry:
The e-mail: “A busboy at Le Central Brasserie once spied a patron slipping an ‘LC’ monogrammed teapot into her purse and alerted then maitre d’ Michel Bonnet. When the lady’s host asked what the mysterious $35 charge on his ‘l’addition’ was for, he paid it without comment after being told, ‘The teapot in madame’s handbag.’ The owners stopped replenishing the monogrammed teapot supply many lunes ago.”