104-year-old St. Francis to change owners, ambience will remain

A malted chocolate shake with huevos rancheros, the “chef’s mess” or “nebulous potato thing.” A hot fudge sundae. A bowl of chicken cilantro soup with a buttery biscuit sunk in the middle. 

St. Francis Fountain serves all of the above every morning to friends in various states of hangover or families out to brunch, crammed into a mildly-comfortable booth custom made in the ‘40s. Those walking down 24th Street on a solitary weekday too can dip into the storied old-school diner, grabbing a bite at the formica counter.

You get what you expect at St. Francis, and you have since it first opened in 1918.

With an impending ownership switch, little of what people love about St. Francis is going to change. In fact, according to owners, it’s likely to get better.

“I’m happy,” said co-owner Peter Hood of the changeover. “You think I wanna run restaurants ‘til I’m 90?” He laughed. Hood is now in his 50s. “St. Francis deserves to have an owner who is really present in the business.”

Hood and his business partner, Levon Kazarian, took over the fountain in 2002, crafting a menu from scratch and transforming the shop from a candy and ice cream parlor into the full-blown diner it is today. Under their helm, St. Francis has become one the most beloved brunch spots in San Francisco.

Hood said he’s always loved “really old stuff. If I ever get depressed, I go to a hole-in-the-wall diner and sit at the counter. It’s like church to me,” said Hood.

And church it is; every Sunday sees a flood of hundreds flocking to the diner’s booths to break bread.

St. Francis Fountain, the oldest continually operating business on 24th Street, was opened in 1918 by the Christakes family. Immigrants from Sparta, Greece, the family ran it as a soda fountain for three generations before giving it up in 2000 to the Madrigal family, who went on to lease the restaurant to Hood and Kazarian a couple years later.

Kazarian, the frontman of the business, ran the St. Francis counter himself almost every day for around nine years, he said. Hood described himself as the “mad scientist” in the basement.

“Levon knows all the people, the regulars, the community. He’s really the face of things,” said Hood. “All you’ve seen and have eaten? That comes from me.” The menu, said Hood, was made from scratch, inspired by personal recipes and diners Hood loved to go to. 

One constant has been the fountain’s head chef, Nectali, who has been in place since 2002. He has been on site almost daily, maintaining a healthy balance of fear and respect with a revolving cast of cooks and front of house workers. 

One former server remembered a time she put a few too many modifications on an order, and Nectali tore it up and threw it in her face. Nowadays, they laugh about the incident. Nectali said he’s unlikely to go anywhere after the new owner comes in. 

Mantakarn Seenin, said Hood and Kazarian, has the diner DNA.

The current owners and Roani, the floor manager, expect most staff will stay on. For Raoni’s part, he wants to “see what happens.”

In recent years, both Hood and Kazarian’s focus has been elsewhere. Hood now lives in the North Bay, and Kazarian spends most of his time in Joshua Tree, where the two co-own Crossroads Cafe, on the main drag of the Twentynine Palms Highway. 

Crossroads has been taking up more of their energy, and, according to both, it’s high time a local was running the show at St. Francis.

Right now, there’s no specific timeline for the change of ownership, but it’s likely to happen within the next month. 

For her part, the new owner, Seenin, isn’t speaking with media “until she gets her feet wet,” noted Hood.

“We wanted someone who could carry on the legacy of the fountain,” said Hood. “The feeling you get when you walk into that restaurant is still going to be the same. We took our time and found who we feel is going to be the right person to carry the torch.”

Seenin has been managing a similar counter at Mama’s on Washington Square in North Beach for eight years. Hood says she knows the lay of the land with old diners: hand-written checks, managing cooks’ and servers’ written time cards, maintaining the delicate, vintage fudge warmer and stemware for shakes.

“The hot fudge sundae is all about the glass dish,” said Kazarian, laughing about his penchant for buying hard-to-replace glass dishes for ice cream, which, he said, sometimes drives Hood crazy. Kazarian also introduced a section for vintage brand candies and Garbage Pail Kids card packs. But Hood agrees: classic works. 

“The sentimentality, the way certain diners are, they still work — and work better than anything new out there. And [Seenin] has the old formula,” Hood added.

Kazarian remembered his early days running the counter, when locals who grew up in the Mission during the ‘30s and ‘40s — when the area was predominantly Irish and German — would come in and sit on the same bar stools they had for decades, cross-examining the new owners to see if they were “for real.”

“People thought we were going to destroy their beloved space,” said Kazarian.

One specific group of old-timers, Rose, Billy and Betty, came in multiple times a week to sit in their same spots and order their usuals — until the last one, Billy, died a couple years ago.

“There was a local working-class accent called ‘The Mish,’” he remembered. He described it as something like a New York accent mixed with a surfer’s cadence.

The fountain has always had its share of legendary cooks, he said. “Oh, man, everyone’s gotten in shouting matches across the [order] window,” Kazarian laughed. “So many.”

One afternoon, following a long shift, a server called and told Kazarian that he had put in an order and the cook, Federico, had apparently been drinking — “he put a washrag on a plate, put it in the [order] window and laid down on the floor and passed out,” said Kazarian.

This is all part of running an old school diner, he said. It’s chaotic and fun, it’s a space for everyone, and it’s unlike any other dining experience.

“If you think of Mel’s Drive-In, think back a long time ago,” said Hood. “There was a guy named Mel with an apron on, working behind the counter. That’s what makes it awesome.”

“It makes a difference when the owner is present and can talk to the customers,” he added. “That’s the kind of vibe the fountain should have.”