Last fall, 53-year-old San Francisco Italian restaurant North Beach Restaurant announced the end was near: they planned to close at the end of December unless they found a new buyer. The restaurant shuttered at the end of the year, but now, its revival is on the horizon. 

Restaurateurs Francesco Covucci and Peter Fazio are under contract to purchase North Beach Restaurant, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). The business partners own a number of other restaurants in North Beach, including Il Casaro Pizzeria, Barbara Pinseria and the California Fish Market.

“We really wouldn’t want this restaurant to go anywhere,” Covucci told SFGATE. “… We were scared another big restaurant chain would come, or turn it into a different cuisine.”

Covucci said they wanted to preserve the restaurant’s Italian heritage, as he and his business partner Fazio were both born in Italy. It also happens to be the first restaurant where Fazio took him out to dinner when Covucci first arrived in San Francisco 20 years ago. 

“We love the atmosphere, the energy, and that’s another reason why we want to have the restaurant to keep it and revive it,” Covucci said. 

When North Beach Restaurant’s co-founders Bruno Orsi and Lorenzo Petroni died (Orsi in 2013, and Petroni in 2014), the “heart of the restaurant was gone,” general manager Maureen Donegan told SFGATE in October. Since then, it has been run by their children. North Beach Restaurant struggled to recover from the pandemic, and had a particularly slow summer in 2023, Donegan said.

The historic Italian spot was known for its hearty Tuscan dishes like spaghetti alla carbonara as well as for being a hangout for politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former San Francisco mayors George Moscone and Willie Brown.

Covucci said he and Fazio don’t plan to change much about the restaurant, but they do plan to make some minor renovations and hire a new chef (the previous chef retired). They expect to update the menu a little bit, while still keeping several popular dishes from the original menu. They hope to reopen North Beach Restaurant by mid to late May.

Longtime patrons have been happy to hear the news that they are purchasing the restaurant, Covucci said.

“We’ve gotten so many messages of congratulations,” he said. “People were very happy that we decided to keep it North Beach Restaurant and keep the Italian heritage. Even the fact that me and Peter are both Italian-born, like Lorenzo and Bruno, they see a lot of similarities with the previous owners and now the new owners.”