Pacific Heights Sandwich Favorite Limoncello Eyes Second Location Opening as Pandemic Restrictions Lift

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

• Pacific Heights beloved sandwich shop and Italian grocery Limoncello will expand this year with a second shop on the corners of 24th and Bryant Streets. Owner Jalal Heydari confirmed with Eater San Francisco that he hopes for a May opening if pandemic restrictions continue to lift. The shop is known for its super stacked sandwiches, gourmet Italian products, imported wines, and Heydari’s relationship with the neighborhood — pre-pandemic, he was known to greet returning customers with a hug.

• While restaurants in San Francisco enter the orange tier of COVID restrictions, which allows for 50 percent capacity for indoor dining, some experts are warning that eating inside a restaurant may not be the best move. UC Berkeley infectious disease expert John Swartzberg basically tells The San Francisco Chronicle that no one should be eating inside a restaurant right now, vaccinated or not. While cases are down, he points out that the new strains of COVID are still out there. [SF Chronicle]

• Bay-area chain Pacific Catch has another location to add to its ever-growing list. The newest address is 3315 Coronado Place in Santa Clara. Pacific Catch is known as a fish house with flavors pulled from map points around the Pacific Ocean. [The Mercury News]

• Palo Alto coffee pop-up Tono has two new pastry partners. Bakers Patty Lu of Year of the Snake Foods and Nariya Charoensupaya of Pastry Cat will now supply goods to Tono. Lu will work Chinese flavors into the pop-up’s baked goods, and Charoensupaya also incorporates Asian influences in pastries. [Hoodline]

• The newest pivot for San Francisco restaurants is to ship food en masse to areas surrounding the city. Services like SF2Bay and TuangoEats deliver meals outside of the geographic range of normal delivery giants (think DoorDash). Customers pre-order from various San Francisco restaurants online and then select from a set of pickup locations. For example, residents of Marin won’t have to drive all the way into the city if they want to have Delfina pizza for dinner; instead, they can place an order through SF2Bay, which will pick up the meals and bring them to an address closer to them. [SF Chronicle]