Chef Joseph Magidow tends to the wood-burning grill during a friends and family dinner at La Cigale in San Francisco on Aug. 28.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Chicken roasts above an open flame at Elena’s in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2024. The family behind Bay Area Italian institution Original Joe’s opened the Mexican-American restaurant to celebrate the Mexican heritage of owner Elena Duggan’s daughters, who have been asking their mom to open a Mexican restaurant for years.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle
When chef Joseph Magidow chars ducks on the wood-burning grill of his new San Francisco restaurant, La Cigale, smoke rises from their crisping skin.
It travels above the hearth and passes through a flue, then up the chimney, which Magidow had mounted as high as possible to prevent the smoke from bothering his Glen Park neighbors.
Article continues below this ad
But it’s really bothering them: Since August, Ava Sasso, who is eight months pregnant, has watched it billow from the chimney and smelled it through her windows. Lori Feldman, whose home of 33 years is three blocks from the restaurant, said it has caused asthma attacks. One family said they are considering moving out of the neighborhood, worried about its impact on their 1-year-old son.
La Cigale marks the latest neighborhood feud over a Bay Area restaurant’s wood-fired grill. In a region where wildfire smoke and air quality concerns have become a part of life, this form of cooking has become fraught. Depending on who you ask, “live-fire” cooking represents either a romantic, timeless technique — or a health hazard. Neighbors worry about harmful smoke exposure and wonder why city and state agencies aren’t doing more to regulate smoke from restaurants. Restaurateurs, meanwhile, already running on thin margins, are often forced by community pressure to install expensive equipment beyond what’s required by code.
Since 2020, at least 280 complaints have been filed with the Bay Area Air District about smoke from food businesses in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, according to records provided by the agency, which regulates the region’s air quality. Complaints mention “burning meat smoke” and smoke that’s “very thick, smelly and leaves a thick black dust residue” from a range of establishments, including fine-dining restaurants, taquerias and Korean barbecue spots.
It’s become a common enough controversy that some local chefs whose restaurants have wood-fired grills have undertaken costly mitigation measures before they’re even open.
“I want my neighbors to come in and eat,” said Rich Table co-owner Evan Rich, who is building out a bistro with a wood-fired grill in San Francisco and equipped it with $80,000 worth of filters. “I don’t want them to knock on my door complaining about the smell.”
Article continues below this ad
Smoke comes out of the chimney on the roof of La Cigale, a new French restaurant in San Francisco whose wood-fired grill is drawing complaints from neighbors.
Courtesy Ava Sasso
Ancient technique meets modern world
Live-fire cooking has a storied history in San Francisco. One of the city’s oldest restaurants, Tadich Grill, was born in 1849, when three Croatian immigrants started selling fish grilled over charcoal on a pier — which is how Tadich cooks to this day. Every location of Italian American restaurant Original Joe’s has been equipped with a mesquite charcoal grill since its founding in the Tenderloin in 1937. Today, many of the Bay Area’s top restaurants use wood-fired grills, ovens and smokers. More are opening soon, including Arquet, which the team behind Michelin-starred Sorrel is bringing to San Francisco’s Ferry Building.
“The wood-burning grill or oven is a unique piece of equipment that you cannot replicate with other means,” said Andrew McCormack, a former fine-dining chef who owns San Francisco brunch restaurant Early to Rise. “When you put a skewer over a wood grill, it’s not just a romantic notion. There is a real difference in the way it actually cooks the food.”
But does smoke from wood-fired grills at restaurants pose a serious health risk? It depends, air quality experts said, on the amount and who’s exposed.
Article continues below this ad
When wood burns, it emits irritant gases and a fine particulate matter, which is also in air pollution from cars, trains, planes and wildfire smoke. Young children, pregnant women and people with respiratory illnesses like asthma are more vulnerable. John Balmes, a UCSF and UC Berkeley researcher who has studied respiratory health effects of air pollutants for 30 years, said that those at the highest risk to smoke from restaurants are the workers with direct, frequent exposure. “The dose makes the poison,” he said. (In 2022, a Cal/OSHA investigation concluded Tadich failed to protect workers from “harmful exposure” from its charcoal grill.)
Gina Solomon, chief of UCSF’s Division of Occupational, Environmental and Climate Medicine, agreed. “From a health perspective, it is valid to be concerned about repeated smoke exposure,” she said. But, she added, “the absolute amount of smoke and pollution that these businesses are producing is actually not that large in the big scheme of things.”
Who’s in charge of restaurant smoke?
Part of the conflict stems from confusion over who is responsible for regulating smoke from businesses. The Bay Area Air District said it regulates “visible” emissions, including smoke, as defined by a scale used to visually measure its density and opacity. The air district can issue fines to a business found to be in violation of air quality standards. (Restaurants are allowed to use wood for cooking purposes on Spare the Air days, which otherwise make wood burning illegal when there’s poor air quality in the Bay Area, said a district spokesperson.)
State health code doesn’t regulate smoke emitted from an exhaust system, so neither does the San Francisco Department of Public Health. In San Francisco, restaurants with wood-fired grills must secure certain permits from the fire department and the department of building inspection, which requires them to install a kitchen hood exhaust system. Wood-burning oven exhaust must be released from the roof of the restaurant, not a wall.
Article continues below this ad
Live-fire cooking can pose a risk to the restaurant itself: Recent kitchen fires have been linked to the grills at at least three Bay Area restaurants. The Michelin-starred Niku Steakhouse in San Francisco closed for two months after a fire caused by accidental grill exhaust, according to the fire department.
Elena’s Mexican Restaurant in West Portal has also received complaints about smoke from its wood-fired grill.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
At Elena’s Mexican Restaurant in West Portal, which has also been the subject of smoke complaints, there was an accidental grill fire last summer, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. In August, just four days after the same owners opened their newest outpost of Original Joe’s in Walnut Creek, a fire broke out there, too, closing the restaurant temporarily. Firefighters removed ceiling tiles and used thermal imaging cameras to search for the source of the fire, according to a Contra Costa County Fire Protection District report. It determined the fire was accidental, the report states, and “believed to have been related to the charcoal/wood appliance and/or the wall it was touching.” The restaurant was set to reopen Oct. 1.
An imperfect solution
Magidow, a longtime San Francisco chef, built his first restaurant entirely around the wood-fired hearth to re-create the way people cook at home in Occitania, a region of southern France. It is the only way to cook at La Cigale: There is no gas equipment of any kind at the 16-seat restaurant, which is in a residential neighborhood.
Article continues below this ad
Concerned by potential complaints about smoke and noise from the kitchen exhaust, Magidow exceeded the minimum code requirement that the chimney sit above the roofline of any neighboring building. He spent about $50,000 to build a large platform on La Cigale’s roof so that the exhaust would reach about 15 feet higher into the air. The smoke also goes through a standard filtration system, including metallic filters above the grill that catch large particulates and sparks. More smoke and gases are caught inside the flue, which vents fumes out through the chimney. (Magidow said he intends to have it power washed every 30 days.)
After receiving about 10 complaints from neighbors, Magidow is now considering other mitigation options. But they may be unfeasible. What’s known as a pollution control unit would scrub pollutants from the exhaust, but the unit, which is about the size and weight of a minivan, would need to be installed on the roof and could cost about $75,000, according to Magidow’s engineer. Another option is to raise the smokestack even higher, and to increase the velocity of the chimney’s fan to further disperse the smoke.
Joseph Magidow prepares dinner, which is cooked entirely on a wood-burning hearth.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Other San Francisco chefs have installed a “limiter” to shoot their grill exhaust as much as 50 feet into the air. After nearly two years of neighbor complaints, Elena’s recently started construction on a custom filtration system. Camino, an acclaimed wood-fired restaurant in Oakland that closed in 2018, used a filter with ceramic beads that had to be soaked and cleaned nightly. (It wasn’t enough: The owners heard from a disgruntled neighbor that Camino’s grill smoke was at its worst when they started the fire each day, so they started preheating logs in the oven. The neighbor never complained again, owner Russell Moore said.)
Evan and Sarah Rich, who are opening RT Bistro around the corner from their acclaimed San Francisco restaurant Rich Table, are excited about cooking on the grill. It will be that “secret ingredient” for many dishes, Evan Rich said. Having heard the “horror stories” about disputes over woodsmoke, however, they’re not waiting to address it. They will mount the exhaust as high as possible on the roof, above most nearby buildings, and they have also equipped RT Bistro’s relatively small wood grill with three filters, including a custom piece of equipment shipped from Italy that Evan Rich described as a “pollution scrubber.” Evan Rich said it was a “long-term investment” that they were able to afford now, but wouldn’t have when they first opened Rich Table.
Magidow is not sure yet how much the potential upgrades at La Cigale would cost and how effective they’ll be; his engineer cautioned that the most feasible option, raising the stack and increasing the fan velocity, won’t completely eliminate the smoke.
“We’re operating in good faith. We’re taking things super seriously,” Magidow said. “Our feeling is that certain people may only be satisfied with a 100% perfect solution, and that solution is unlikely to be 100% perfect.”
A ‘failure of oversight’?
Frustrated residents are demanding more. Ava Sasso, who has lived on nearby Surrey Street for 30 years, said the smoke from La Cigale has caused headaches, watery eyes and coughing. During the restaurant’s soft opening, she closed the windows, but an air purifier still turned red, according to photos provided to the Chronicle, designating “poor air quality due to a significant quantity of airborne particles.”
“We want the downtown of Glen Park to be revitalized and we want this restaurant to thrive, but not at the expense of our health,” Sasso said.
Another neighbor, Lori Feldman, said La Cigale’s smoke exacerbates her asthma, causing coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath as well as burning eyes. She typically uses an emergency asthma inhaler about every two months, but since La Cigale opened, she said, it escalated to several times a week. She’s advocating for a more extreme change: ditch the wood grill entirely.
“It seems the best the owner can do is to stop using the wood burning stove and cook the way most restaurants cook,” Feldman wrote in an email to the Chronicle.
Joseph Magidow explains the menu to guests during a friends and family dinner at La Cigale.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Several neighbors have complained to Magidow as well as their city supervisor, Rafael Mandelman, and the Bay Area Air District, but feel frustrated at the lack of action to date.
“While I understand that pollution-control systems can be expensive, they should be considered mandatory for any restaurant choosing to operate solely with a wood-burning oven in a residentially dense neighborhood,” Sasso said. “This feels like a systemic failure of oversight.”
Mandelman, who has smelled smoke from La Cigale himself, said his office’s role has been to answer residents’ questions. “We are not in a position to be enforcing air quality,” he said.
The business, Mandelman noted, filled a long-empty space in a neighborhood struggling with retail vacancies. His office has also received messages in support of the restaurant, he said.
“It’s in the category of urban neighborhoods: The great part about them is the diversity of uses, and sometimes conflicting activities that are all going on in a relatively small space,” Mandelman said. “That’s what happens in cities.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the reopening date of Original Joe’s Walnut Creek.
Dining and Cooking