Black Lives Matter Protest Planned at Controversial Sonoma Restaurant

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• Six months after Kimi Stout says she left acclaimed Sonoma restaurant The Girl & The Fig, and six weeks after she posted about her departure on Instagram, SF Gate picked up her account, reporting that Stout says she was “pressured to quit for wearing a Black Lives Matter mask to work.” At first, the restaurant released a confusing statement about its mask policies that appeared to suggest that as a “premier dining experience” an expression of support for social justice was inappropriate, and the spot later announced on Facebook that Stout “made her own decision to quit because she did not want to follow the rules.” Now, reports the SF Chronicle, the restaurant has ”closed for the foreseeable future,” and ABC 7 reports that protesters are planning a Valentine’s Day rally outside the venue in support of the BLM movement.
• Officials are warning folks not to congregate for Year of the Ox celebrations, as “we saw a [COVID-19] spike after Thanksgiving, we saw a spike after Christmas, and we do not want to see a spike after Lunar New Year.” [ABC 7]
• San Francisco police say they’ve arrested a suspect in last weekend’s kidnapping of two children abducted as their dad made a Doordash food delivery. [Bay City News]
• A DC-based steak frites chain called Medium Rare is looking for a Bay Area location. [SF Business Times]
• Union Square’s Nespresso Boutique has a window display promoting its “Doing is Everything” campaign, but the “i” is easy to miss. [Broke Ass Stuart]
• Chinatown restaurant Hang Ah tea Room, which at 100 is the country’s oldest dim sum spot, “plans to distribute 2,020 meals to food-insecure families in Chinatown as a way to say goodbye to last year’s pain and greet a more hopeful period.” [SF Chronicle]