The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene.
The police blotter and restaurant news unfortunately have a few overlaps today. Last night a man was shot, in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Now Grub Street is reporting that the victim, who was shot outside of Hog & Rocks, may have been an employee of the restaurant.
The Richmond blog shares that a restaurant on the 4000 block of Balboa was broken into, and the robbers made off with cash from the register. The only restaurants we know of on that stretch are Al-Masri Egyptian and Empero Taste, but neither returned our calls to verify if it was indeed one of them.
In SOMA, what was first thought to be a shooting of an employee of the new Gap food truck Pico de Gap, turned out to be an employee of the Fluid Ultra Lounge. LiveSOMA shares, via the Examiner, that she was shot in the leg twice during a robbery and sustained non-life threatening injuries.
And while appearing on the Berkeley police log, it was just a giant foodie party. Eater SF shares, via Berkeleyside, the Gourmet Ghetto hosted an impromptu street party on Saturday in celebration of Chez Panisse's 40th anniversary. Revelers were eating free pizza from the cheese board and listening to a live band before the police peacefully dispersed the food-loving crowd. BART police: consider free pizza?
Chef news: The Flour + Water team's next project, Central Kitchen & Salumeria, is underway, and while they haven't announced an opening date, they have announced their chef de cuisine. Inside Scoop shares that Michael Gaines will move into the new kitchen after three years at Manresa, and the three before at Gary Danko.
Two weeks ago we mentioned Delfina's chef de cuisine, Matthew Gandin, was stepping down. Now Grub Street shares that his replacement will be Dylan Montano (formerly of Manzanita at the Ritz in Lake Tahoe and Quince.)
Openings: Like we mentioned earlier, grilled cheese lovers are going to have 500 new places to get the gooey sandwich starting today. The first location of Jonathan Kaplan's The Melt is open (115 New Montgomery at Minna).
Hold up: Dumpling & Buns opened yesterday, but hit a couple snags (such as having buns but no dumplings). Inside Scoop shares that they've decided to close for today and tomorrow and reopen on Thursday with buns and dumplings.
Also, as we mentioned late last week, Specialty's Cafe & Bakery opened its largest location on 500 Howard (at First). It appears they're in expansion mode, as they've got their eyes set on opening another location across the bridge in Oakland City Center this fall (555 12th St. at Clay).
