Classic SF Restaurant Seeks Financial Support From Controversial Website

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• The owners of San Francisco’s Tadich Grill, one of the oldest restaurants in the state, are celebrating after the Barstool Fund, a crowd-supported effort to shore up small businesses during the coronavirus crisis, said it would give them up to $31,000 a month to help the shuttered business make it through the shutdown. The restaurant’s owners tell the SF Chronicle that they were unaware that the fund’s founder, and the website with which the fund is associated, has been the focus of numerous allegations of racism, sexual harassment, and online hate. “There’s no room for racism and racist comments,” the daughter of Tadich’s owners, Melanie Pipas, said, but “wherever in his heart he had the ability to make a meaningful difference for small businesses, he’s doing that, and for that we’re grateful.” According to the fund’s founder, who has been skeptical of the need for business restrictions throughout the pandemic and who has faced criticism for his widely-broadcast use of racist language, Tadich’s owners have pledged that that January 6 will be celebrated in his name at the restaurant “for the rest of [their] history.”
• Between March and November of 2020, 299 new restaurants opened in SF, pandemic be damned. [SF Gate]
• The owner of the Mission’s Atlas Cafe says the kindness of the neighborhood has kept the business going. [Mission Local]
• Martinez is mulling a 15 percent cap on the fees delivery apps charge businesses. [KPIX]
• El Huarache Azteca, a 23-year-old Oakland restaurant specializing in foods from Mexico City, has been a mother-daughter operation for the last three years. [Berkeleyside]
• The founder of South Bay kosher catering company Neshama Foods says “his love of street food in Israel” is what fuels his dishes. [J Weekly]
• The owner of Menlo Park candy shop Sugar Shack is facing calls for a boycott after she attended this week’s violent pro-Trump rally-turned-riot in Washington, D.C. [SFist]