What Tadich Grill Regulars Order — From Cioppino to Martinis

In an era when uncertainty reigns, we seek stability. Some sort of reassurance that, while the world swirls around us, some things — some places — remain the same. In San Francisco, for legions of regulars, that’s the 176-year-old Tadich Grill.

Blame it on our famously shaky fault lines or sky-high rents, but San Franciscans are not used to permanence. Not much, nor many, grows old here. Instead, this is a city of transience and transition. Fueled by booms and busts and booms again, San Francisco hurtles toward the future, as fast as the fog unfurls.

But inside Tadich Grill, we feel something we too rarely do: the past. As if someone pressed pause and never resumed play. It’s a true time warp, where business deals are brokered in private booths, and a brass order-up bell ding-dings, and politicians lunch over “Warm Water Lobster Tail Broiled,” and tips aren’t pooled. Where all walks sit shoulder-to-shoulder along an 80-foot-long counter, ourselves included, communing over lunchtime cocktails (plural) of both the booze and shrimp variety.

What began during the gold rush as a wharfside tent pitched by a trio of Croatian immigrants serving coffee to sailors, merchants, and fortune seekers soon became a bustling downtown brick-and-mortar. Since then, ownership has changed hands just three times. Today, its neon red sign still shines like a beacon, and its window is emblazoned in gold script: “The Original Cold Day Restaurant.” It’s a promise of what’s inside: warmth, not just from the steamy bowls of cioppino and chowder (red and white), but from those who eat it, serve it, cook it, and bus it.

The staff, who hail from Morocco to Mexico, is a motley, almost all-male family in uniform attire. Clad in coats as white as the tablecloths, they look more like doctors than servers these dining days. Fitting, actually, as Tadich is a cure of sorts. Its dark wood and light banter are an antidote to the screens and sterility and intangibility of San Francisco’s tech scene surrounding it.

Tadich is like the trolley car of restaurants. (It predates them, actually. Cars, too.) It’s a relic San Francisco doesn’t need anymore. At least, not in a practical way. Emotionally, though, Tadich is transportive, a tether to a place that gives it a sense of one.

“People used to say, ‘The waiters at Tadich are so mean!’” laughs Paul Geiger from behind the bar. At 37, and in his eighth year on the staff, he is the baby of the bunch. “But that’s just because they were pushed to the brink!” Things have slowed, he says. Then he leans in and whispers. “This is much more enjoyable.”

It is more than that, though. Tadich is heartening. Happy. It’s where kids morph into adults, and the host, Jose (on staff for 26 years), bellows to most who enter by name, and cocktails are $11 — relatively reasonable in a city that isn’t. Today, when so many restaurants feel fleeting, Tadich feels sturdy. It has stood, albeit in several different locations, through it all: earthquakes and fires, depressions and global financial crises, scandals and heart attacks, even a gunfight in 1863. It has witnessed two pandemics and 34 presidents. There’s a 92-year-old regular named Richard, who still ambles in for pork chops with applesauce, an iced tea, and an IPA. He’s been doing so “for longer than I’ve been alive,” says Paul.

As restaurant regulars ourselves, we have spent years eavesdropping, leaning into other people’s tables at all sorts of restaurants to ask: Who are you? Why are you here, again? And again? On a typical Tuesday at Tadich, we slide between a gentleman armed with an actual newspaper and a lawyer debating LeBron versus Abdul-Jabbar with Paul, encountering only the occasional woman in sensible shoes (because: time warp). We are all but stewards of these booths and barstools. Stewards sipping exceptional Martinis.

Drew Williamson is on his third (Ketel One, dirty, bone-dry, no vermouth). “They’re small, though,” says the partner at a nearby law firm. He has been coming to Tadich three times a week for the past 13 years. Drew likes to get out of the office — even though his office is often Tadich. “I’ve done some quality work here!” he laughs. Recruiting. Reviews. Teachable moments. “Instead of ‘Come into my office, sit down’ — let’s go get a drink and shoot the shit. This is a more disarming atmosphere. It puts people at ease. I’m not advocating getting people liquored up!”

He takes a sip of his Martini. “But breaking bread — here, anywhere — is beneficial.” During the pandemic, Drew missed his Tadich lunches. And Tadich missed him. “As soon as they reopened, I was here,” he says. “When I walked in, I got a standing ovation.”

Sitting two stools down is Gilbert Herrera, a more under-the-radar regular, even after 27 years — even since moving across the Bay. In a blazer and buttoned up button-down, he quietly digs into his white clam chowder and small dinner salad with shrimp and crab. “They always bring the Tabasco, but I never use it,” he says. Instead, two lemons.

Sometimes he gets the cioppino. That requires a bib. “You can’t eat cioppino without a bib! I’ll have one in the back, too — in case I get really messy.” Gilbert is a San Francisco native and is part Mexican, Cherokee, and French. “I blame the French for the wine,” he says. Today, though, it’s a Martini (Gibson, two onions, twist). He orders a third and, like people do at Tadich, keeps talking. “I’m self-employed in corporate America. An old hippie radical. Can I still be a hippie at 71? I’ve been in every fight. I have an FBI file,” he admits.

For Gilbert, like many, Tadich is a respite. “When I come, I come by myself. That’s the beauty of enjoying a meal.” He drains his glass. “I pray twice a day to my ancestors. I pray for the sick, the homeless, the hungry.” His eyes tear up. “That’s not the Martini talking. That’s the spirits.”

Paul nods over to Jim Dawe, strolling in as he usually does, in denim on denim, watching the Giants with his son Chris. His usual: Louie salad. Jim: sand dabs — a flounder from Monterey Bay. Except maybe the time his friend Thomas dared him to switch it up. (“He’s dead now.”)

Chris has been coming to Tadich since he was born, 49 years ago. His father? “Hmmm …” He does the math. Sixty years. “Longer than Jose!” he laughs. “They should buy me a drink by now. At least a pin. I should get a pin!” says Jim.

Chipper, bespectacled, with a full head of gray hair and a matching mustache, Jim looks awfully good for 81. He hoists his Martini glass (Beefeater, dry, olive) as if to clink his son’s (Hendrick’s, same). “Alcohol,” he explains, “is a preservative.”

To our right, we observe a drink being delivered to Susan Amorde. She describes herself as “the Martini queen,” but this evening, she’s in a Scotch mood. An artist up from Los Angeles, Susan is what you might call a Tadich binger — has been for the past five years. “I was here last night. I’m here tonight. I guess that makes me a regular?” She takes a bite of her salmon fillet, mesquite-grilled with green beans and new potatoes. She spies a mound of bay shrimp in a sundae glass. A guy holds up its mini three-pronged utensil and beams. “Best thing about this dish? The fork!”

Susan is a seafood person, but unlike Jim Dawe, she did not love the sand dabs she had ordered last night. “I didn’t realize it was breaded!” She sips her Scotch, finishes her salmon, and eyes our pan-fried petrale sole. “That’ll be tomorrow night.” Suddenly, the shrimp cocktail guy pops his head between us. He is on his way out. “Shh, don’t say anything, but I’ve got a little fork in my pocket.”

Meanwhile, Todd Gray, ensconced in a booth, notices lots of little Tadich things, the kind of things only a real estate broker who’s been dining here for three decades would notice. Like the light fixtures. Todd loves those Art Deco lights, but they drive him nuts. “Look, they have different bulbs!” Some are bright white LEDs, some warm yellow. “Why do they do that? Just make them all the same!” He notices when Tadich’s new chef puts a tad too much tarragon in his red chowder and appreciates when Paul piles on the parsley. (“Not every server adds the parsley!”)

And, of course, he is particular about his Martini. “Gin — it’s a Martini.” (Bombay, White Label.) “I hate it when they don’t fill it up to the top.” And he likes it dry. “That doesn’t mean there’s no vermouth. The new young culture doesn’t want any vermouth. But Martini means vermouth! Just a touch. A dribble.” His chowder arrives. He lets it sit. “Took me six times burning my tongue to learn.”

In all his Tadich time, Todd puts its heyday at 2017. “The city, this place, was going gangbusters.” he says. “It was as close as I’m ever gonna get to the Roaring ’20s. They still had bowls of lemon wedges!” Not anymore. Lemon wedges: arbiter of the times.

Todd attended Tadich’s 175th anniversary party last year. Everyone was there. Even former mayor Willie Brown, who lately has been favoring Sam’s Grill — San Francisco’s third-oldest restaurant. Todd likes Sam’s, too. But it’s no Tadich. Sam’s bar and its petrale sole — and its soul — just isn’t as big, Todd explains. “I like soul.” He looks around the room. “If these walls could talk …”

They can’t, of course. But Todd and Paul can.

It’s not about the service, says Todd, sipping his sufficiently cooled chowder. “It’s about how humans interact with each other. I need a dose of civility. It’s civilized here,” he says, stirring in his parsley. “For 90 minutes, time stops. I catch my breath. I have my meal. And then I go back out.”

As do we. We bid goodbye to Paul and Jamal, and Pedro and Jose. Warmed by Tadich’s world, we step outside, into the cold, foggy-sweatered one. A trolley chugs by as we wait for our Waymo.