New Restaurant Openings Start to Tick Up

A new speakeasy bar has opened on Polk Street, Go Duck Yourself is coming soon to Bernal Heights, and Little Star Divisadero is staying open until September now.

One of the most anticipated openings of the spring, which we still don’t know too much about, is Tiya, which is taking over the former Maybeck’s space in the Marina. As we reported earlier this week, this will be an upscale Indian concept from a pair of brothers who are both chefs, Pujan Sarkar of SF’s Rooh, and Sujan Sarkar of Chicago’s Michelin-starred Indienne. There will be a four-course tasting menu featuring “New Indian cuisine with California influences,” as well as an a la carte menu available only to walk-in guests. An exact opening date isn’t clear, but reservations are reportedly going live on Tock on April 15. See the restaurant’s website for details.

In the Castro, Fisch & Flore debuted on Wednesday, serving a menu of sustainable seafood — including raw bar items — in the former Cafe Flore space. Owner Serhat Zorlu describes the food as “seafood-centric cuisine that’s from all around the world.” And the cocktail menu includes a Queer Fashioned (rye, amontillado, and orange bitters), and the Fisch Martini (gin, anchovy vodka, cocchi americano, thyme and rosemary oil). As SFist previously noted, it will be open for dinner only to start, with brunch coming at a later date.

Michael Mina’s upscale Greek restaurant Estiatorio Ornos is shutting its doors after less than three years. The restaurant opened in 2021 in the space that was formerly home to Restaurant Michael Mina (252 California Street), and before that, the restaurant where Mina got his start, Aqua. As Eater reports, the Mina Group will not be trying again in with another concept in the space, and they are letting go of the lease, but they hint that they have “some exciting new announcements coming soon.” Mina Group still operates Pabu nearby, and International Smoke in Millennium Tower.

Also closing is Oakland vegan restaurant Lion Dance Cafe, which as Eater reports is shuttering after 12 years in business on April 27.

In Chinatown, beloved Cantonese-style barbecue duck purveyor Hing Lung is moving out of the space it has called home for 43 years at 1261 Stockton Street. As the Chronicle reports, by the end of June, Hing Lung will relocate to 927 Post Street in Tenderloin, to the former Meraki Market space.

Coming soon to Bernal Heights is Go Duck Yourself, the cheeky offshoot of Hing Lung. The new restaurant will feature Cantonese-style duck and pork, as well as dishes from Teochew, the city in the southern Guangdong province whose cuisine has been popping up across across the Bay Area. Check their Instagram for an update on the opening timeframe.

A new speakeasy-style bar, disguised as a convenience store, has opened on Polk Street. It’s called Blind Pig, and as Eater reports, it’s the latest project for Derrick Li, who created the bar program at Dragon Horse in SoMa, previously made drinks at Cold Drinks upstairs from China Live, and was the bar director at Sushi Sato — which was the previous tenant in Blind Pig’s current space at 1113 Polk Street. Blind Pig originated as a pop-up in 2022 inside the 83-year-old Cathay House in Chinatown, and now has a permanent home, with cocktails featuring Asian ingredients many drinkers might not be familiar with, like the high-proof Chinese sorghum spirit baijiu. And, yes, you need a password to get into Blind Pig, which will be posted weekly on Instagram.

And on Wednesday we learned that a new high-end Japanese restaurant called Comorebi is moving into the former Trou Normand space at 140 New Montgomery. We don’t much yet about the concept, but it appears to be a second restaurant from the chef-owner of Michelin-starred omakase spot The Shota, Ingi “Shota” Son.

Chronicle food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan published a review of Tosca Cafe on Thursday, saying that it was her favorite restaurant in the country when April Bloomfield turned the former dingy bar into an Italian destination a decade ago. “Between Bloomfield’s food and the energy and history of the room, there was no restaurant in America where I would rather be,” she writes. But these days, a couple years since consulting chef Nancy Oakes redid the menu, the food is “wildly uneven,” with under-seasoned fried chicken, “violently undersalted” pesto pasta, and a “gloopy and clumpy” cacio e pepe. Also, Chung Fegan describes “a dining room so loud on weekends that it helps if you read lips,” that is often filled with large parties — including bachelorette parties. Still, she says, “it remains a great bar,” and the famous boozy cappuccino is “still very much worth ordering.”

And, Chung Fegan has just updated the Chronicle’s Best Dim Sum list, and discusses her five top dim sum dishes in town — which include the coffee lava buns at Harborview, and the roast duck and peanut dumplings at HK Lounge Bistro.

The Chronicle also has a piece about how restaurant sales revenues are broadly down across San Francisco compared to five years ago. The piece contains the detail that Little Star Pizza on Divisadero, the original location which is no longer affiliated, business-wise, with the Valencia location, is staying open until September despite an earlier closure announcement because owner Brian Sadigursky wasn’t able to secure a new restaurant tenant to take over his lease. Sadigursky says that despite raising prices on pizzas, he’s still “not making a penny” of profit from the restaurant and hasn’t since 2022.

Photo: The bar at Fisch & Flore, photo by Joe Kukura