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Fast-casual San Francisco concept Souvla to open new location with wine bar

The Dogpatch location to feature mezze and other shareable items

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 12, 2022

2 Min Read
Souvla-Dogpatch.jpg
The newest location of Souvla will have a wine bar.Jordan Wise

The fifth location of Souvla, the highly acclaimed fast-casual restaurant in San Francisco specializing in Greek-influenced sandwiches and salads, will have an expanded menu and a bar with a larger by-the-glass wine list, the company’s management said.

Slated to open Aug. 16 in the Dogpatch neighborhood, the new 70-seat location will offer counter and bar service and serve chef Tony Cervone’s shareable appetizers, or mezze, including a chilled octopus salad with shaved radishes, lemon and parsley, lamb meatballs with mushrooms and roasted tomato sauce, and dakos, a dish from Crete made of tomatoes and feta cheese over wheat rusks. Traditional mezze including saganaki, or broiled cheese, stuffed grape leaves and spanakopita, or spinach hand pies, will also be served along with spreads such as garlicky yogurt tzatziki, the fish roe dip taramasalata and roasted eggplant or melizanasalata. Prices range between $8 and $18. Additionally the fried dough dessert loukoumades will be available for $10. For the first time, Souvla’s whole feta=brined, spit-roasted chicken will be available for dine-in, rather than as an off-menu takeout item, for $33.

The chain’s regular gyro items will be available, too, of course.

“This is our first restaurant in three years and we’re taking the opportunity to not only evolve what a Souvla restaurant looks like, but also really double down on our Greek heritage and the traditional fine-dining backgrounds that many on our team members have,” founder and CEO Charles Bililies said in a press release announcing the opening. Bililies himself designed the restaurant, as he has with all other Souvla locations, making use of the space’s 19-foot ceilings.

Related:Souvla elevates the simple gyro in San Francisco

Souvla, which opened its first location in 2014, has always had an all-Greek beverage selection, but the new restaurant will feature a wider variety of wines, including its own private-label bottles, and others ranging from crisp, minerally white wines from the island Santorini to full-bodied reds from the Nemea wine-growing region on the Peloponesus, plus ancient-style wines aged in large earthenware vases called amphorae.

The new restaurant will be around the corner from a new five-story Restoration Hardware and its Palm Court Restaurant as well as the 28-acre Pier 70 waterfront development.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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