“My wife and I were really just trying to bring something that brought a lot of the memories, a lot of the recipes from the family that represented the authenticity of the cuisine,” Rallo recalls. Castro helped bring back those flavors that Rallo and his wife were looking for, he says, that they weren’t finding in the restaurant scene back in the early 2000s when Colibri launched.
Many of the former Colibri staff came back on board including chef Edgar Castro, who hails from Mexico and trained under chef Nancy Oakes. Josh Sanchez, The SVL Agencyįor those who remember Colibri’s food, expect much of the same Mexican food that it was known for, Rallo says. The decor, the colors, and the colonial feel only added to that, Varsic adds, noting that the building is one of the oldest in California history.
Colibri’s cuisine and design are influenced by Mexico during the porfiriato, a time period where there was a “tremendous amount of French influence in Mexican culture,” Rallo says. The move to the officers’ club struck Rallo and operations manager Gabriela Varsic as quite the match.
They began the search for a new home, eventually reaching a deal with the Presidio Trust to lease out both the officers’ club and a still-unopened spot as part of the in-progress Presidio Tunnel Tops. But when the hotel converted into supportive housing for the homeless in October 2020, the group didn’t want to leave the 18-year-old restaurant behind. The restaurant closed down during the March 2020 shutdown, and restaurateur Eduardo Rallo and his partners took the downtime to renovate Colibri. It’s been a tough ride for the restaurant, which was previously located inside the former Hotel Diva on Geary Street. SFist will alert you as soon as we learn what Rallo has planned.After a year and a half long pause in service, Union Square mainstay Colibri Mexican Bistro has landed in a new location: the historic Presidio Officers’ Club, the former spot of Tradi Des Jardins’ Arguello. Rallo's group, Presmex, now has 15-year leases for both the Arguello and Tunnel Tops spaces, per the Chronicle. A rep for Des Jardins said at the time that the decision was made "due to the complicated pressures brought by the COVID-19 pandemic." And Traci Des Jardins' former Commissary space at the Presidio Main Post also remains vacant and without a signed tenant.īut the Presidio Trust only recently pivoted to signing leases with restaurateurs, rather than trying to manage the spaces itself and contracting with caterer-operators - Des Jardins had one of the latter deals, in partnership with Bon Appetit Management, which held the main contract with the Presidio until that deal was dissolved early last year. While Rallo has not yet given any details about what the plans are for the Presidio spaces, it's not a huge stretch to imagine that Chika might be the thing that would fit into a counter-service-type spot at the Presidio Tunnel Tops, or maybe it will be something more like the outdoor, tequila-bar vibe of El Jardin.Īs the Chronicle notes, there's another, 6,000-square-foot restaurant space in the Presidio Tunnel Tops project that does not yet have a taker. Rallo also has been introducing a casual Mexican-style rotisserie chicken concept called Chika - originally called Parranga when it opened in 2018 in Mill Valley, it now just has one location operating at Santana Row. And the longer-lived Colibri, which opened in 2004 and was one of the first restaurants to introduce San Francisco to upscale takes on Oaxacan cuisine, closed its doors in the early pandemic and never reopened. Rallo was a partner in the splashy La Urbana, the upscale Mexican restaurant and mezcal bar that opened at Divisadero and Grove in 2013 and closed three years later.
And in addition to taking over the Arguello space that was relinquished by Traci Des Jardins during the pandemic, Rallo will also be opening something else - presumably smaller - in a space at the soon-to-open Presidio Tunnel Tops. The restaurateur behind the former Colibri Mexican Bistro near Union Square and La Urbana on Divisadero, as well as Zazil Cocina Mexicana and El Jardin at San Jose's Santana Row, has signed a deal to take over two spaces at the Presidio, including the former Arguello space at the Presidio Officers' Club.Įduardo Rallo is the man behind the newly christened Presmex Group - a play on Rallo's existing restaurant group name, Resmex - which has just signed the two leases with the Presidio Trust, as the Chronicle reports.
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