Most nights at Cotogna in San Francisco, staff turn away people who just want to have a drink or a snack at the perennially packed Italian restaurant’s bar. “We already have people waiting,” said director of hospitality Sam Boisvert.
Come spring, those diners will have somewhere to go: Bar Coto, a casual, all-day Italian café that owners Michael and Lindsay Tusk are opening in part to address demand at Cotogna. The Tusks, who run a suite of nationally acclaimed restaurants in Jackson Square — the three-Michelin-star Quince, Cotogna and the also-packed Verjus, all on the Chronicle’s list of the 100 best restaurants in the Bay Area — were inspired by Milanese cafés, including Bar Basso, as well as Bar Pisellino in New York City (which owners Rita Sodi and Jody Williams also opened to handle overflow from their nearby hit restaurants, Via Carota and I Sodi).
While getting a primetime table at Cotogna, Quince or Verjus requires some advance planning or a bit of luck, Boisvert said the goal is to make Bar Coto, which he is overseeing, accessible. It will feel like an “Italian café in a traditional, community sense — something that opens and runs throughout the day, where people can stroll in, grab a coffee at the bar, a pastry, a gelato and it continues throughout the evening,” he said. “Impulsivity implied.”
Bar Coto will be the Tusks’ sole restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, with limited seating but space to stand. During the day, it will serve espresso, pastries and sandwiches on housemade bread.
The space, at 596 Pacific Ave., was originally billed as a spinoff for another offering that’s outgrown demand at Cotogna: executive pastry chef Jennifer Felton’s gelato. Bar Coto will still be a stage for it, serving flavors such as vanilla honeycomb, or ones incorporating peak-season produce from the Tusks’ Bolinas farm.
At night at Bar Coto, there will be low-ABV cocktails such as vermouth and spritzes, wine, beer and snacks like conservas and seasonal antipasti platters.
Diego Delgado-Elias, a Paris-based architect who worked on Quince’s recent remodel, is designing the 1,300-square-foot space, which is anchored by a terrazzo bar in the center. The walls will be covered in wood and decorated with rounded mirrors meant to reference portal windows in the Quince dining room.
The Tusks are among San Francisco’s most acclaimed restaurateurs and have built a small cadre of businesses in Jackson Square, starting with Quince, which moved to Pacific Avenue in 2009. Cotogna followed next-door in 2010. They also operate a nearby private events space called Officina, and opened French-inspired wine bar Verjus on Washington Street in 2019. It closed for four years during the pandemic before making a comeback last year.
Correction: This piece previously indicated Cotogna has a Michelin star.
Dining and Cooking