This Michelin Guide-Worthy Vegetarian Restaurant Is Making a Comeback

After shutting their restaurant down in 2020, the trio behind popular Sacramento vegetarian spot Mother is bringing it back with a new location in Midtown, the Sacramento Bee reports. Originally opened in 2014 by partners Mike and Lisa Thiemann and Ryan Donahue, the vegetarian restaurant received rave reviews and earned a place on the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand list in 2019. The partners also opened nearby Empress Tavern a year later in 2015, but Mother closed in January 2020 and Empress closed a few months later in August 2020.

Chef Robb Venditti joined the Mother team after time at Pangaea Bier Cafe and running his own catering company, and is working to open Mother 2.0 at 2319 K Street with much of the same menu from the original location, he told the paper. Customers can also expect the return of the restaurant’s specialty dinners — as well as the chicken-fried oyster mushroom po’boy sandwich — and the restaurant will open with beer and wine, with the hope to add cocktails next year.

HenHouse Brewing to reopen its Fairfax taproom

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Santa Rosa-based HenHouse Brewing will pour its beers once again in Marin County on June 9 with its reopened taproom in Fairfax. This is the third taproom for the beer company and notably its first location with a kitchen. The food side of operations will be run by chef Lauren Garcia, who’s worked at the Slanted Door and the William Tell House.

Don’t call it a comeback, Loard’s Ice Cream has been here for years

Loard’s Ice Cream is making moves again with both a brand-new location and a reopening this year. First up, the Bay Area ice cream brand will reopen its flagship store in Oakland this June, after being closed for three years, the San Francisco Standard reports. Along with the reopening comes the news that the brand is also opening its first San Francisco location at 1601 20th Street, in the former Dave’s Food Store space. This Potrero Hill location will be the ninth shop for Loard’s Ice Cream.

Two industry vets to open a ‘raw bar’ in Livermore

Spurred by a lack of raw bars closer to their home base of Sunol, Frances Catano and Joe Tomaszak will open a new restaurant in Livermore centered around seafood, the Mercury News reports. Catano and Tomaszak previously worked at Robin, Rintaro, (now-closed) ICHI Sushi, and Ototo in Los Angeles, and now their new restaurant, Cured: Fish Bar, is scheduled to open in the fall at 136 Maple Street. Catano says that while Cured is a “raw bar,” they hope the new space will “open up the conversation that not all raw fish is actually raw but cured, whether by salt preservation, aging or other interesting curing methods that Chef Joe has been learning in the sushi world.”

Update: May 26th, 2023, 12:15 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect that HenHouse Brewing is reopening its taproom in Santa Rosa.