North Beach Restaurant during 2023 Columbus Day celebrations at 1512 Stockton St, San Francisco.
Courtesy of North Beach Restaurant
When the restaurant’s co-founders, Bruno Orsi and Lorenzo Petroni died (Orsi in 2013, and Petroni in 2014), it was the beginning of the end, general manager Maureen Donegan told SFGATE. North Beach Restaurant is currently run by their children. “When those two men passed away a number of years ago, that heart of the restaurant was gone,” she said.
The restaurant has also struggled to recover from the pandemic. Donegan started working there in 2021, and was brought on to help revive it after a nearly 18-month closure.
“We reopened it after COVID and tried to give it some new life, but I think we lost a lot of the customers that used to be living in San Francisco,” Donegan said. “A lot of the people that were here have moved away.”
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Business this past summer was also “terrible,” she said. She described North Beach Restaurant as an old-school spot that didn’t necessarily fit into the new San Francisco dining scene.
“Techies don’t dine the way that old-school people dined,” she said. “They’re way more health conscious, they don’t drink as much, they move faster… whereas our customers are still old-school, and they sit down and have a cocktail and no one has their phones out.”
North Beach Restaurant’s menu is known for hearty Tuscan favorites like their pasta della casa with prosciutto, mushrooms, veal and white wine sauce, and spaghetti alla carbonara. Historically, it’s been a hangout for politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former San Francisco mayors George Moscone and Willie Brown (Brown still comes in twice a week, according to Donegan).
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Unless North Beach Restaurant finds a buyer, it will close at the end of the December, Donegan said. If they’re forced to shutter, they plan to throw a big New Year’s Eve party to commemorate their final day in business.
“There’s not a lot of restaurants that can survive decades and decades,” Donegan said. “… People need to go out and support the restaurants in San Francisco that they love if they want to see them survive, because this is the time to do it.”