Photo Credit: Courtesy Michael Mina Group
Get ready San Francisco’s Marina neighborhood: Michael Mina is coming your way! The restaurant management company of the James Beard Award-winning chef has taken ownership of the building at 2120 Greenwich Street, where Café Claude Marina vacated after about 18 months in business. Located on Greenwich Street at Filmore Street, this will be the Mina Group’s first venture in the Marina/Cow Hollow neighborhood where much of the team lives including President, Patric Yumul.
A culinary leader in San Francisco, Mina Group has long sought the perfect space to develop a neighborhood restaurant and has finally found it at 2120 Greenwich, an ideal space – cozy, inviting and fun – everything a neighborhood favorite should be. Combined with Mina Group’s signature hospitality and cuisine, it is sure to become a gathering place for locals.
“We fell in love with the space and have been pining to do something in one of the neighborhoods,” Yumul said. “The Marina made sense as much of our team lives there.”
This latest development follows the 2014 openings of PABU and The Ramen Bar, a joint venture with Chef Ken Tominaga at the helm.
“We have found an amazing space in 2120 Greenwich,” exclaims Chef Mina. “We’re going to utilize it as a test kitchen until we figure out what the right concept is, the one that truly resonates with the community.”
The 1600-square-foot space will re-open mid-summer with a series of pop-ups offering a glimpse into the influences that inspire Mina and his team rising star chefs. Using these dining experiments to determine what type of establishment is most reflective of the area’s desires, Chef Mina’s goal is to develop a gathering place and dining destination for the community.
The first pop up will be a passion project between Chefs Mina and Adam Sobel, inspired by their Middle East roots – Mina born in Egypt, and Sobel, who has roots on both sides of the Mediterranean. With a strong desire to explore their heritage while cooking food that is close to their hearts, the duo with introduce a celebration of eastern Mediterranean cuisine, combining the flavors of Israeli, Turkish, Egyptian, and Lebanese cuisines with the California farm-to-table approach.
