Decades-old Mexican restaurant Don Ramon’s will get to live another day in San Francisco.
The 40-year-old institution, which shuttered in March, is expected to reopen later this year on the ground floor of Four Embarcadero Center, as first reported by the San Francisco Business Times. Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced the return of Don Ramon’s on Tuesday during a CityBeat breakfast hosted by San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce, according to the Business Times.
Nati Ramirez, co-owner of Don Ramon’s, confirmed the new restaurant location with SFGATE on Wednesday and shared that she and her sisters hope to open the business sometime in August.
“There was just an outpour of support from our clientele and friends,” Ramirez told SFGATE. “When one door closes, another one opens.”
The search for a new space began in April, according to Ramirez, who shared that she and her family had reached out to the office of Supervisor Matt Dorsey. Later, the Ramirez family was presented with vacant spaces around San Francisco, including locations in the Mission and the Tenderloin. It wasn’t until a friend of the Ramirezes reached out and flagged the space at Four Embarcadero Center, which had been the home of a former Rubio’s restaurant.
Ramirez said that the new location is ideal for Don Ramon’s comeback since it already has some of the restaurant equipment needed, though the site will require some updates, such as a fresh paint job and a new minibar. Furthermore, the space will be much smaller than the previous Don Ramon’s site at 225 11th St., but Ramirez said that it will maintain the same feel and flavors as the original.
The news comes nearly two months after Don Ramon’s second- and third-generation family owners announced the restaurant’s permanent closure March 31. In a lengthy message posted on the business’s website, the Ramirez family shared that they had worked tirelessly to keep Don Ramon’s afloat but that, in the end, their “hard work” wasn’t enough.
“It breaks our hearts to say goodbye to our customers, especially our regulars, who have been able [to] call Don Ramon’s a second home for years,” the message read in part. “… San Francisco has lost a family.”
The San Francisco Chronicle previously reported that the closure came after the landlord increased Don Ramon’s rent from $10,000 per month to $15,000 per month. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
Ramirez told SFGATE that she and her sisters weren’t sure if they would be able to reopen Don Ramon’s after its closure, especially given the economic troubles they had gone through over the years.
In 2014, the Ramirezes leased the office space above their restaurant to a nonprofit organization that, unbeknownst to the family, converted the space into illegal housing units, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Ramirezes were at risk of foreclosure amid the pandemic when they couldn’t make payments on a $5 million loan they had pulled to make repairs after the tenants vacated the space.