The comeback is over. Park Tavern, the brasserie that has anchored the Stockton Street edge of Washington Square since 2011, with a few dramatic interruptions, announced Wednesday on Instagram that it will close permanently on June 21.
"It has been our privilege to serve this community," the restaurant wrote, thanking staff past and present along with the regulars who kept the dining room humming through more eras than most San Francisco restaurants ever get. The team is asking guests to come back over the next two weeks for a last meal and a raised glass. No reason for the closure was given.
There's a small, very San Francisco grace note. June 21 is Father's Day, and the restaurant's website still lists a special Father's Day brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. that Sunday. Barring a change of plans, the final act of this storied restaurant will be pouring mimosas for North Beach dads.
The closure lands just 19 months after a revival that arrived with genuine fanfare. James Nicholas, a fifth-generation San Franciscan and an original partner in the restaurant, took over the lease in 2024 and recruited his friend of more than two decades, Jonathan Waxman, the Chez Panisse alum and chef-owner of New York's Barbuto, a man the James Beard Foundation once named the best chef in New York City. When the doors reopened on November 22, 2024, 7x7's first-look review described a 180-seat room remade by designer Jon de la Cruz: leather banquettes, a marble communal counter, a dozen seats at a chef's counter peering into the open kitchen, and antlers in the chandelier nodding to the room's hunting-lodge bones.
Then January came. Chronicle critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan's review was a flattening; she described one entrée as "the worst steak of my life" and found the service nearly as wobbly as the cooking, noting that Waxman, who splits his time between coasts, was rarely in the building. The kitchen regrouped. In came chef de cuisine Chris Santopinto, a Delfina and Aphotic veteran, and by spring the restaurant had opened McQueen's, a members-only lounge wrapped in midnight-blue paint and velvet drapes, as the Standard reported in April 2025. Waxman didn't dodge the stumble in that story. "I think it was a wake-up call that we needed," he said, taking full responsibility for the rough opening.
It wasn't enough to save the place. And for longtime San Franciscans, this goodbye carries the weight of everything that came before it. Park Tavern opened in the fall of 2011 as the follow-up to Marlowe from Anna Weinberg, Nicholas, and chef Jennifer Puccio, and it was an instant phenomenon, earning a James Beard nod for Best New Restaurant in 2012. Puccio's smoked deviled eggs, the brussels sprout chips, and the imported Marlowe burger became the stuff of citywide cravings, and the room itself, big and boisterous yet somehow intimate, felt like it had always been there.
It hadn't, of course, and it couldn't last. Weinberg and Nicholas divorced, splitting up a restaurant group that had grown to include The Cavalier, Leo's Oyster Bar, and Tosca Cafe; Weinberg held onto Park Tavern through the pandemic and a long renovation. A 2023 comeback attempt was cut short when an eviction notice over unpaid back rent arrived that winter, and by the end of the year the restaurant was dark and presumed gone, until Nicholas and Waxman proved otherwise. Briefly.
Whatever comes next inherits an address with serious ghosts. From 1992 to 2005, 1652 Stockton was Moose's, the saloon Ed Moose opened after selling the Washington Square Bar & Grill across the park, the legendary "Washbag" where Herb Caen, Willie Brown, and half the city's power structure took their long lunches. That corner of the square has been hosting San Francisco for over three decades; it's hard to imagine it stays empty for long.
Until June 21, Park Tavern is open for dinner Monday through Saturday at 1652 Stockton St., with happy hour until 6 p.m. and one final brunch on Father's Day. Go say goodbye.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
You can become a paid subscriber. Or donate. Or learn more about us.
