Madeline Wells

Presidio Social Club, a restaurant housed in former military barracks overlooking the lush San Francisco national park, has closed after 18 years. Its final day of service was May 12, Mother’s Day, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). “With profound regret and sorrow, I am sad to announce the closing of Presidio Social Club,” read a note from owner Ray Tang on the Presidio Social Club website. “ … What a…

A new food hall called the Prescott Market is slated to open in West Oakland later this year. Right next door to Raimondi Park, the home of new independent baseball team the Oakland Ballers, it plans to feature eight food and drink options, including a taproom from Alameda’s Almanac Beer Co. Prescott Market is to be housed in a 1923 building at 1620-1640 18th St. that was used for manufacturing in the mid-20th century. Currently, Almanac is the only tenant to have officially signed a lease, alth…

Alice’s Restaurant, a historic Woodside eatery nestled in the redwoods, recently went viral on Reddit for a surcharge on diners’ bills. The photo in the post shows a notice at the cash register reading, “Due to inflationary reasons, a 6% surcharge will be added to your bill.” Reddit users left angry comments about the surcharge being “predatory” or “scummy,” and the restaurant received some one-star Yelp and Google reviews as well. But as of Sunday, according to Alice’s Restaurant co-owners (and…

Red Lobster suddenly closed more than 50 restaurants across the country Monday, including two in the Bay Area, reported multiple news outlets. The seafood chain’s locations in Fremont and Rohnert Park were both listed as temporarily closed on the Red Lobster website as of Tuesday. The Rohnert Park restaurant had a sign taped to its doors on Monday afternoon that said, “This location is permanently closed as of 5/13/24. We greatly appreciated your loyalty,” according to the Press Democrat. Las…

Only one Bay Area restaurant made Yelp’s 2024 list of the top barbecue spots in the country. Capelo’s Barbecue, a Southern barbecue restaurant in Redwood City, was ranked No. 33. Capelo’s is run by John Capelo, a pitmaster who grew up in Harlingen, Texas. Capelo started out with a food truck around 2010 and opened his brick-and-mortar beer and wine garden on Middlefield Road in Redwood City in 2021. The restaurant’s menu includes beef brisket (which takes up to 18 hours to smoke), pork ribs, pu…

For UC Berkeley students and alumni nostalgic for the days when they used to scarf down a hot dog after class, some sad news: The downtown Berkeley location of Top Dog has closed. The over 20-year-old eatery at 2160 Center St. had its final day of service on May 2, as first reported by East Bay Nosh. Top Dog’s original location on Durant Avenue in Berkeley as well as its Oakland location remain open. Top Dog co-owner Renie Riemann said that she and co-owner Richard Riemann decided to close the r…

The California restaurant industry was shocked on Tuesday to hear that a new law banning “junk fees” will apply to restaurant service charges, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). The law, Senate Bill 478, set to go into effect on July 1, prohibits the use of “drip pricing, a practice in which companies advertise only a portion of what a customer would actually pay for a certain product or service,” according to CBS…

The cheese world is in turmoil after a Berkeley vegan cheese company was disqualified from a prestigious food competition. The judges of the San Francisco-based Good Food Awards were so impressed by Climax’s plant-based blue cheese that they named the product a finalist in January, even though it was competing against traditional cheese products. Furthermore, Climax was slated to actually win the award, Climax CEO Oliver Zahn told the Washington Post, having been instructed to keep the informati…

You can’t mention vegetarian cuisine in San Francisco without talking about Greens. The waterfront Fort Mason restaurant has been a pillar of the city’s plant-based dining scene since 1979. So it may come as a surprise that as a mostly vegetarian (I eat seafood here and there), I’ve never actually been to Greens in my decade of living in the Bay Area. On a sunny Thursday, I finally made my pilgrimage out to the Marina District for lunch at the famed eatery. Giant paneled windows framed serene v…

Matt Horn’s Michelin-recognized West Oakland restaurant that was destroyed in a fire in late 2023 is making a comeback. “We’re thrilled to announce that Horn Barbecue will reopen its doors this Friday!” Horn announced in an Instagram post on Wednesday. The restaurant is slated to open at 464 8th St., Oakland, which is the address of Horn’s burger restaurant, Matty’s Old Fashioned. SFGATE reporter Nico Madrigal-Yankowski reviewed the upscale burger joint in 2023, and it left him wanting more. Whi…