Popular SF Taqueria To Open First Mexican Wine Bar In The US Everyone has an opinion about Yelp, it seems. I understand the criticism: the platform is overloaded with inane reviews, and negotiating the mudslingers definitely requires a critical eye. But there’s also a very good reason the website has remained … Read the rest
What’s New At Tony’s Pizza Napoletana? So Glad You Asked After a decade and a half as a North Beach resident, you can imagine I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. And in a neighborhood like ours, that of course goes for bars and restaurants as well; after … Read the rest
Mayor Breed Honors North Beach Legend Al’s Attire I love nice clothing of all sorts, but for me there’s nothing quite like a good pair of shoes. No other single element of style makes more of a statement—or inspires the same level of loyalty among the fashion inclined—than … Read the rest
One-Man Kitchen: La Fusión Shines In San Francisco’s FiDi When Eduardo Bonilla opened La Fusión in San Francisco ten years ago, he was coming off a fifteen year stint at Zuni Café, Judy Rodgers’ venerated Market Street eatery. It would be his first restaurant, and here the chef … Read the rest
More To Love: Four New Pizzas At Tony’s Pizza Napoletana There are a lot of good things about North Beach, and as regular readers know, I spend a fair amount of time enumerating the neighborhood’s virtues here on the blog. I’ve been here for a decade and a half now, … Read the rest
Local Photographer Markelle Palombo Takes A Higher Profile North Beach is a neighborhood that has long been known for its creative types, and happily that hasn’t changed too much. Even after the retail shakeout of the last couple of years, we’ve still got storefront galleries–with more apparently on … Read the rest
Vintage Posters: The Old Things Are The Best Things I love old things. Looking back, it seems like I always have. My mother loved antiques, and spent a good part of her life buying and selling them for a living; she was a picker, in her words, and didn’t … Read the rest
People’s Choice: Sotto Mare Number One On Yelp In San Francisco In 2007, roughly one year after I moved to North Beach from Lower Manhattan, Sotto Mare opened its doors on Green Street. They chose a busy location, directly between the street’s two most storied watering holes, Gino & Carlo and … Read the rest
Thanks To The SFIAC Foundation, North Beach Flies The Tricolore Afresh As much as any neighborhood in San Francisco, North Beach has undergone vast, often disruptive changes over the years. Between soaring rents and bust-and-boom business cycles, we’ve seen it all here. Despite all that, when you talk to locals about … Read the rest
Pitch-Perfect Peruviano: Eddy Bonilla of San Francisco’s La Fusion Every once in a while you come upon a restaurant and a chef that reminds you what it’s all about. In July, I wrote here about one such chef, the remarkable Eddy Bonilla of La Fusion, who has been … Read the rest