Curtis Kimball, who became known for selling $3 crêmes brûlées from a cart in 2009, died on Feb. 19 after an aortic aneurysm. He was 46 years old.
Kimball’s Crème Brûlée Cart often gathered in 2009 behind the Mission Playground on Linda Street with a group of other chefs working from carts including his brother, Brian, who sold from the Magic Curry Cart.
The cart movement, which included the Sexy Soup Lady and Adobo Hobo quickly gained popularity among neighbors looking for a quick meal, thanks to an ever-growing pool of patrons referred via Twitter.
Brian Kimball told Mission Local in 2009, “Someone told me, ‘You should get on Twitter.’ I did that, and now people just come to me. At that time, he had 991 followers. His brother Curtis had 1,025 (his 1,000th follower was offered a free crème brûlée).
The crêmes brûlées proved popular, and were featured in the New York Times.
Most recently, in 2022, Kimball switched out the butane torch for the griddle and became the “Pancake Guy.” During the pandemic, he began flipping pancakes for friends and strangers in Precita Park, drawing hundreds of customers craving breakfast and social interaction. Once again, he built a reputation for his dessert pop-ups, but it was never about the food; it was about building community.
“I’m making pancakes. We’re all making friends,” Kimball’s X bio reads.
“He brought people together — one brûlée, one pancake, and one laugh at a time,” Kimball’s family wrote on X on Sunday.
That’s what Kimball’s family and friends (and San Francisco) will remember him for — and for being a loving, committed father. Kimball leaves behind his wife, Nicole, daughters Harper and Eloise, and a baby boy expected this summer.
“He was just this amazing, quirky, fun person who really just genuinely cared about creating community and great experiences for people — regardless of where he was going or what he was doing,” said Matt Cohen, a longtime friend who met Kimball during the “guerilla-style” food-truck craze of the early 2000s.
Originally from Prescott, Arizona, Kimball called San Francisco home for more than 20 years, before temporarily moving cross-country in 2022, and then to Sebastopol, California, the following year.
When he held a farewell pancake breakfast in July 2022, “A bunch of people came to say goodbye to me today — people I don’t know,” Kimball said, eyes watering. “Having an outsized impact is … cool.”
And that he had.
Kimball approached his food- and friend-making ventures with low-tech marketing — custom memes, chalk on the ground reading “Pancake Party!” — yet they quickly drew scads of customers and became a local fixture people would welcome back over and over again.
“He seamlessly became part of the neighborhood fabric of that funny little corner. I remember he’d bring leftover brûlées by the cafe to share, and we’d make sure he never paid for a drink,” wrote a friend of Kimball’s on Instagram. “It was just that natural community-building thing that came so naturally to him.”
This is sad to hear, I remember buying a crème brule from him in Dolores Park back in the day and absolutely loving it.
Such dreadful news. Thank you for breaking it Mission Local and Kelly Waldron. Curtis Kimball was a GIANT. May he rest in eternal peace and power. I feel so terribly for his daughters, his wife and the baby on the way.
How sad, he was such a lovely person! I moved to SF on Linda St in 2010, and he was a fixture of my first few years here—I even started using Twitter to follow his food cart. My condolences to his family.
💔
Please consider updating the article to include the gofundme campaign for his family:
https://gofund.me/2ef6542b
This is really sad 🙁
Very sorry for the loss of such a kind spirit.
I remember him from the Crème Brûlée Cart/Twitter days 🥹. He was such a great guy! God bless his family.
In 2009, I wrote a column for CRM Magazine that focused on lessons large companies could learn from the likes of Curtis and his brother. I was a dedicated customer of both–even when Curtis tried his short-lived brick-and-mortar operation. Then when the pancake parties hit the news, I wrote another column timed with the CRM Magazine’s silver anniversary that called our Curtis by name (for anyone who wants to read a very nerdy business magazine column: https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/The-Last-Line/Remembrance-of-CRM-Things-(and-Sweet-Desserts)-Past-152181.aspx )
I’ve often lamented the loss of the weird in SF. Curtis and his spirit always helped me keep faith in my city.
I share your sense of regret about the “loss of the weird” in SF.