La Cigale, a new French restaurant, is quietly taking shape at 679 Chenery Street, a storefront that formerly held Modern Past.
Owners Joseph Magidow and Daisy Linden plan to open by mid 2025. The restaurant will feature cuisine of Occitanie, the region spanning southwest France and the Spanish Pyrenees. La cigale means the cicada and is a regional symbol of hope, music and rebirth.
According to Magidow, the menu will change daily and feature local producer-direct ingredients.
With 17 years in the restaurant business, chef/owner Magidow says remodeling the long-shuttered retail space on Chenery Street has posed serious challenges.
“It’s a full build out from an empty shell,” he said, “In converting a non-restaurant space, the highest cost is ventilation. La Cigale’s kitchen will entirely consist of an eight-foot-long wood burning hearth, custom built.”
Working with Seth Boor architects and Mizen Construction, the new restaurateurs face complex requirements. Restaurant wood ventilation systems in San Francisco require both a specialized hood vent and fire suppression devices.
“The design and engineering of a wood hearth is not standardized,” Magidow explained. “These costs alone are well into the six figures.”
“My wife and I love San Francisco,” he added. “We don’t see La Cigale as just a ‘destination restaurant.’ First and foremost, we envision a neighborhood restaurant. Glen Park is a lovely hidden gem with lots of history. Daisy and I look forward to both living and working here, as part of the local community.”
In a city notorious for its red tape, permitting can take an inordinate amount of time. Magidow acknowledged this but remains sanguine.
“Thankfully, our location is zoned as a commercial and transit district. In Glen Park, doing construction and opening a small business are about as easy as it gets in San Francisco.”
Asked about the lingering effects of COVID-19, Magidow is also upbeat:
“There is a lot of talk about how dining out hasn’t returned to 2019 levels. I do wish structural issues in our society weren’t driving the cost of dining out so high. But operators can be asking harder questions about how to give people a good reason to leave their houses. We haven’t yet invented an adequate replacement for a printed menu, a creased napkin, and a cordial “let me take care of that for you.”
“I firmly believe going out to eat and drink represents a much more fundamental urge than not wanting to do the dishes. We will be devoting La Cigale to making people feel taken care of, not just fed.”
The space was formerly home to Modern Past, a mid-century furniture store owned by Ric Lopez that over the past few years had mostly been closed and appears to have ceased operations sometime during COVID.
