Melissa Perello Considering Lower Haight Expansion

Frances chef Melissa Perello is a longtime resident of the Lower Haight, having purchased a TIC there eleven years ago (she even redid the kitchen herself!) Now she's considering opening her second restaurant there, as she tells Haighteration: "I'm thinking about starting to think about Frances #2. I love Nopa, the area and the restaurant both, and everybody wants me to look in that area, but it's becoming saturated. I think there's interest in what's going on [in the Lower Haight]." Her reasoning behind an expansion is that things finally feel settled at the four-year-old restaurant. "I'm looking to replicate [Frances] on a larger scale. I'm just contemplating it. 18 months into Frances, I was like, I'm never going to do this to myself again, this is torture. It was hard. But now the kinks have been worked out and the systems are in place and I'm finally taking a deep breath and thinking it would be fun to do something else. I'm sure I'll curse myself."

Though she hasn't started shopping for spaces yet and an actual announcement is still a ways off, Perello says she's already thinking about what the neighborhood needs: "I wonder what the people in this neighborhood want. That was a big thing for me going into the Frances location. We're just off Castro, close to the Mission, it's a cute little neighborhood spot, but there's no parking, it's not very big. What do people want from us? I think it would be the same moving into this area. What do people need? What services do we need to provide? Give people what they want and they'll come."

· Meet Melissa, Chef/Owner of Frances [Haighteration]