![]() Yum!!Īll of the food is Venezuelan cusine but what first attracted me to this place was the empanadas which I became I huge fan of in Argentina. Elsewhere on the menu are empanadas, soups, salads, sides of yuca fries and sweet plantains and drinks. ![]() I found their website and was excited to check this place out because it is a 100% wheat and gluten free kitchen! There are three types of bread to choose from if you are in the mood for a sandwich: Arepas (grilled corn flour cake), Maize’wich (sweet corn bread) and Cachapas (100% sweet corn sandwich) and various interesting fillings. in San Francisco.ĭianne de Guzman is the Food + Drink Editor at SFGATE.Pica Pica Maize Kitchen is the first gluten free eatery I visited in San Francisco. Pica Pica Arepa Kitchen is located at 401 Valencia St. So I consider Pica Pica an enormous success." We never got to that goal but we survived for fourteen years and my four children along with the tens of thousands of people who ate our food, understand and appreciate my heritage. We had dreams of making Pica Pica Arepa Kitchen a big company with thousands of restaurants all over the country and share our love for Venezuelan culture and cuisine. So we decided to open an 'arepera' together. "My father asked how I was going to ensure that my Latin and Venezuelan heritage was alive and palpable for my family. "I started Pica Pica after my daughter was born in 2006," López Vermut wrote in a goodbye email to customers. The hardest thing, she noted, was thinking about the team she's led at Pica Pica and the customers she's welcomed into the restaurant. There are children who need help with distance learning, the Pica Pica cookbook she's been thinking about writing and even a signature hot sauce that she's been considering launching as a product. Pica Pica was also one of the few options for Venezuelan food in San Francisco, proudly serving its arepas to customers.Īlthough the restaurant is closing, López Vermut still has some plans in place for the future. The restaurant found its niche among the celiac community, serving gluten-free and allergen-friendly items, which they had become known for, López Vermut said. Pica Pica's Oxbow location in Napa eventually closed, as did a Pica Pica location in Castro, but the family made their home on Valencia Street for years, focusing on growing that location and its customer base. López Vermut ran the restaurant with her father as business partner, starting Pica Pica around the time of the birth of her first child, despite working in venture capital prior to starting the business. and it's just going to be hard for people like me who just don't have much left to keep going." "But I think that, like it was in 2008, I got a great deal on that location when I first came out to negotiate in 2010, and there's going to be some really cool stuff happening, but I think we just have to hang in there. "I think the next two years in the city are gonna look hard in the restaurant industry," López Vermut predicted. Still, the restaurant was not able to ride out the hardships, not to mention the pricey rent a restaurant space on Valencia Street commands. "So the point was, the tagline was, 'Food for families, jobs for hourly employees.' And the point was just making sure that we keep everybody employed." "We went far and it was really incredibly rewarding and I was able to keep everybody employed, which was amazing," López Vermut said. I think that as I've been getting information from a lot of the tech companies that we have served for many years, that they're not coming back or they're not planning to come back until January - that 50% is gone for good in terms of sales."ĭuring shelter in place, López Vermut said she and her team had raised money to make 30,000 meals for local homeless organizations, help managing to retain 17 employees. "When the pandemic hit and shelter in place happened, we immediately stopped receiving office orders and dining obviously went out. "What I started seeing over the years was that people were going into restaurants less and less," López Vermut said. Then the pandemic struck, and shelter in place changed everything. Delivery had come to make up 25% of the restaurant's sales last year, with 25% from dine-in customers and 50% from catering, she estimated. López Vermut explained that in more recent years, office catering had become a larger part of Pica Pica's business model. But there's only so many crises that I can handle." Immediately, the big crisis hit us and so we survived that, obviously. ![]() "When I opened Pica Pica, it opened in Napa at the Oxbow Public Market and it was 2008. "I ran the numbers and I'm going to have to either get a loan or incur debt - and it's just not something that I'm ready to do," López Vermut said.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |