Rocco's Cafe San Francisco Intro
A brief customer intro to the outside and inside of Rocco's Cafe San Francisco CA.
Rocco's Cafe South of Market
1131 Folsom St. (between 7th & 8th)
San Francisco CA 94103
415-554-0522
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My mother passed away this past week (I'm predating this from June 18), and for some reason one of the things that came into my mind recently was a memory of a particular day long ago when my mom took me to eat at Rocco's back when it was located on Geneva and Mission in SF. She loved the sandwiches there. Coscarelli is actually of Calabrese origin. There's no longer a great enthusiasm for Italian food in San Francisco. Of course, the hipsters have their places, other communities prefer to stick with their own food, and it's just sort've hit and miss now... a few sporadic places for the most part... a few of the old legacies still. I can't vouch for Rocco's now, but I'll probably make my way there sometime in the next few weeks.
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'Rocco's Cafe maintains nostalgic flavor in rapidly changing city'
Carl Nolte - San Francisco Chronicle - November 18, 2017
My friend Kenneth Sproul is a San Franciscan who worries that the city is losing its soul. He scours the town looking for old-school restaurants, which serve plain but honest meals with a splash of nostalgia sauce on the side.
Most people know about Sam’s, the Tadich Grill, the Swan Oyster Depot, Original Joe’s and the Hang Ah Tea Room. But Sproul has introduced me to places like the Gold Mirror, out on Taraval, the Seven Mile House, just over the county line near the Cow Palace, and the late, lamented Bonanza, which used to be next to a defunct bakery in an industrial district in the southern corner of the city. They all have a certain style, hard to define — the city as it used to be.
“I know another great place,” he said the other day. “It’s Rocco’s Cafe, on Folsom Street between Seventh and Eighth. It’s Italian. It’s South of Market before it became SoMa.”
Rocco’s is in the seam among two or three different versions of San Francisco. Eighth and Folsom is the eastern boundary of the Leather Belt, celebrated at the Folsom Street Fair, which describes itself as “an-only-in-San Francisco event, where 400,000 fetishists gather every year.” Seventh Street is another frontier: an emerging tech neighborhood where nerds are king. An industrial remnant of another time is still there, too.
If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is. “I’m old-school in the middle of a new city,” said Don Dial, the owner and head chef at Rocco’s. “I’m North Beach in South Beach.”
Dial has owned Rocco’s for 27 years now.
“I was a kid, 25 years old, when I started here,” he said. “I’d been in the business, and I wanted my own place.”
He looked all over until he found a broken-down joint on Folsom. “There were no customers, all the windows were broken, and the place was a wreck,” Dial recalled. “The owner wanted $125,000 for the business. I offered him 25 grand, and he threw me out. But I looked up his record with the health department, and it was awful. So I got it for $43,000.”
He named it after his grandfather, Rocco Coscarelli, who was born in Italy, came to California in 1920, worked as a waiter at the Fior d’Italia in North Beach, and eventually opened the first Rocco’s at Geneva Avenue and Mission Street.
Dial’s family was all cooks, waiters, owners, restaurant people. His aunt owned the Monte Carlo in the Bayview, and his uncle ran the food operation at the Italian American Social Club just off Mission in the Excelsior.
“My father and mother met over a roast beef sandwich at the original Rocco’s,” Dial said. “We’re talking about 80 years of my family in the restaurant business.”
Dial is a big man, 53 years old. He has a bluff manner, and no one would say he’s shy. He cooks in the open kitchen most days. Like most Italian restaurants of this style, it’s a show — flames flaring up, steam from boiling water, the cook whirling from one task to another. Some customers like to sit at the counter and watch — a good idea because it’s only a 40-seat place and the tables fill up at busy times.
“We do all right,” Dial said, and he’s happy to tell you why. Hard work is the key.
“I had to do it all myself,” he said. “When I first started, I worked from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. No kidding. At first, when things were slow, I went outside, in my chef coat, like a barker at a girlie show in North Beach. ‘Come on in,’ I said. ‘Spend 20 bucks. What have you got to lose?’”
It was dangerous on Folsom back then. “Underground sex clubs, meth labs,” Dial said. But the area turned around. The Giants ballpark did it, he thinks. Now this part of the city is SoMa, with “garden apartments” in formerly dank alleys selling for close to $800,000.
“They are building luxury condos across the street,” Dial said. “A million and a half bucks each.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t like what’s happening to this city,” he said. “It’s the tech capital of the world. People are coming here from all over. Pretty soon it will be a cross between New York and Hawaii.”
Though many of his customers are techies, Dial refuses to put in free Wi-Fi and scowls at laptops. “I think people should put down the computer and enjoy each other’s company,” he said.
So how’s the food? The portions are large, the dishes are hearty, the kind of meal your Aunt Josefina would like. But maybe not your foodie cousin Jennifer.
I had ravioli and meatballs for lunch the other day. My companion had minestrone soup and a side order of calamari. “How’s the lunch, honey?” the waitress asked. “Good,” he said. “Old school.”
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