Popular Señor Sisig to Open New Location at the Ferry Building

Food truck favorite Señor Sisig is adding one more storefront to its growing list of restaurants, and it’s a big one: The group is set to land at the Ferry Building with their unique style of Filipino-Mexican cuisine this summer, and will take over the former Brown Sugar Kitchen space.

Señor Sisig co-founders Gil Payumo and Evan Kidera have some big additions to the menu in mind for the upcoming location. Regular diners will recognize the majority of the menu, with a combination of both meat and vegan options for its burritos and tacos, but as is the case with their other permanent outposts, diners can expect some Ferry Building exclusives. Befitting of its location, Kidera says he and Payumo are experimenting with some potential seafood options as well as leaning into the chance to offer pulutan, or shareable dishes. “With food trucks you need to create things that are easy to package and take with you,” Kidera says. “But at the Ferry Building we are going to have indoor seating and the outdoor patio space where I think being able to have items that are shareable and have that experience of pulutan, is what we want to create.”

Senor Sisig

Senor Sisig

And while the Mission Street location currently serves wine and beer, Señor Sisig will be branching out into cocktails at the Ferry Building restaurant for the first time. “I think there’s a lot of fun things that we can do that are going to be exciting for everyone to try,” Kidera says. The plan for now is to find someone local who can help them work Filipino and Mexican flavors into the new cocktail offerings — Kidera briefly mentioned ube, pandan, and Philippine citrus, calamansi as potential cocktail flavor profiles — that will pair well with the food. “There’s so many fun tropical fruits; you can have tropical drinks, you can have some savory drinks, but being able to kind of mix it and tell a story with those drinks is what we’re trying to kind of work out,” Kidera says.

An indoor and outdoor spaces are in the process of being worked on, but Señor Sisig’s trucks and locations are known for its bold use of color and collaborations with artists, such as Jeremy Fish and Aaron Kai, so expect more of that for this spot. Kidera didn’t quite want to share just who they’re looking to work with for the murals and the decor of the space, but promises “fun, unique art” akin to their other locations. “We always want to have a bright, fun kind of branding that just kind of pops and it’ll all be intertwined within the space,” Kidera says.

Senor Sisig

The Señor Sisig team is fast becoming neighborly with other businesses within the Ferry Building. Even before the official opening, the restaurant already has collaborations in the works with others, such as the Humphry Slocombe team. The ice cream makers are working with Señor Sisig on an exclusive “churron” flavor, bringing the flavor of turon — a Filipino dessert of sweet banana, folded inside a lumpia wrapper, then deep fried and caramelized on the outside — into an ice cream, with chunks of churro folded in.

The Ferry Building outpost is just the latest storefront for Señor Sisig, with a new upcoming space also set for Oakland, but it’s all part of a larger plan to see how far Kidera and Payumo can take the brand. “We will always be food trucks at our core, that’s where we started; but as we grow and we can take these next steps in what Señor Sisig is going to be for the next decade, we started to kind of see we can take our brand to brick and mortar locations,” Kidera says. “The Ferry Building was an opportunity that we just felt like we couldn’t pass up, it’s really exciting with me being from San Francisco, born and raised here — to be able to put our brand there was pretty much a dream come true.”

Senor Sisig

Senor Sisig

Senor Sisig