In a win for San Francisco’s battered Downtown, the renowned Crustacean restaurant will open in newly constructed digs in the Financial District.
The Euro-Asian fusion eatery founded in Nob Hill by chef Helene An plans to open a 5,700-square-foot restaurant under construction at 91 Pine Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
The Vietnamese restaurant known for its garlic noodles and whole roasted Dungeness crab could be a boon to Downtown. The office vacancy in San Francisco is nearly 28 percent, according to CBRE, which has put the city on a national watchlist for “the most empty downtown in America.”
The Financial District, among the neighborhoods hardest hit by dwindling foot traffic, has been the subject of at least one makeover attempting to revive its cultural heartbeat.
Crustacean hopes to open into the larger quarters at Battery and Pine streets in time for the year-end holiday season, Kenneth Lew, a managing member of the restaurant’s House of An hospitality group, told the newspaper. It also wants to draw diners from conferences at the nearby Moscone Center,
The move is prompted by Crustacean approaching the end of its lease at 1475 Polk Street. Its new location will allow for an upgraded kitchen.
The restaurant will honor the remainder of its agreement in Nob Hill, but is undecided whether it will try to run two San Francisco restaurants for a spell once the Financial District location opens, Lew said.
House of An operates Crustacean in San Francisco, a Crustacean restaurant in Beverly Hills and Thanh Long in San Francisco.
In 2021, the restaurant firm led by Elizabeth An opened AnQi Shaken & Stirred, a Vietnamese bistro and noodle bar inside the Bloomingdale’s at Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara.
Crustacean applied to open its Financial District eatery at the end of 2019. It can fit 145 people in the dining room and nine at the bar, according to planning documents.
The new look will be “modern and clean,” according to JH2 Architects, the Newport Beach-based firm that also designed a renovation in 2018 of the Crustacean in Beverly Hills.
The restaurant will have a bar surrounded by marble columns, according to renderings. On the ceiling a pattern of overlapping triangles, composed of backlit metal and fabric strings, allowing soft light to fill the dining room.
— Dana Bartholomew