Mission Buzz: New murals coming to Wiese, pop-ups join forces and El Faro for sale

Two local pop-ups are joining forces to open their first brick-and-mortar. 

Fat Cat, a wine club pop-up founded by Jessica Bell three years ago, and Claws of Mantis, a Vietnamese pop-up by local chef Kevin Tang founded six years ago, are taking over the space formerly occupied by the pinball and Hawaiian food gastropub Outer Orbit at 3215 Mission St. (near Valencia Street), which closed in February 2025.

The collaboration  began taking shape “sort of jokingly” over a glass of wine, Bell said. She was doing a three-month Fat Cat pop-up inside the space formerly occupied by Fisch & Flore, at 2298 Market St. (at Noe Street), and Tang did a pop-up inside that pop-up.

The two bonded over the difficulty and expense of transitioning from pop-up to brick-and-mortar, and began to discuss joining forces, with Tang running the kitchen and Bell running the front of the house. 

Bell found the space through a broker in January. It was nice and well-kept, but too big to be the home of Fat Cat. But not too big to also be the space for Claws of Mantis.

“It all sort of fell into place. The owners were so great and gave us a really great deal that we really couldn’t refuse,” said Bell. 

“Kevin and I decided, ‘fuck it, we can share the rent. We can share the utilities.’” 

Fat Cat, Bell said, specializes in serving wine that is produced by underrepresented communities — female, queer and winemakers of color — at a reasonable price, and in making wine accessible to people who want to explore but feel intimated by the industry. 

Claws of Mantis specializes in California/ Southern Vietnamese cuisine. “The menu is gonna be off the cuff. Vietnamese food you can’t find anywhere else. It’s gonna be exciting. It’s gonna be fun,” said Tang.

Why? I asked.

“I wanted to showcase that Vietnamese cuisine is diverse and regional,” he replied.

Tang grew up near San Jose in a Vietnamese/Cambodian household, and has cooked at local restaurants such as Nari and Mister Jius. On Tuesday, he had just returned from a month-long trip to Vietnam where he held  pop-ups in Saigon and Da Nang, and traveled the country on a two-week immersion tour sponsored by Red Boat, the Vietnamese fish sauce company.

Fat Cat opened on April 9 and is currently serving wine, cheese boards, small plates, deviled eggs and pimento cheese. “The Mantis,” as Tang is calling his part of the business, will open in mid-May.

Another pop-up is looking for a permanent home.

Fatty Natty’s, a pizza pop-up that served inside Precita Park stalwart Charlie’s Cafe (3202 Folsom at Precita) once a week, was forced to shut operations after the Department of Public Health informed owner Nat Talbot he couldn’t use the cafe kitchen to bake pizza any longer.

Talbot, the son of journalist David Talbot and a chef by training, started Fatty Natty’s in December 2024 to help pay the bills after his father suffered a stroke in June of the same year. 

Talbot intended to get permits to make Charlie’s Cafe his commissary kitchen, but after a visit from an inspector from the Department of Health, Talbot was informed that the oven inside Charlie’s needed a ventilation hood, and that there was not enough space for storage.

Fatty Natty’s officially served its last slices at Charlie’s Cafe on Feb. 5.

“It sucked, because it was a good, steady flow of income. Right now, me and my brother are doing the caretaking for our parents,” said Talbot. Nat and his older brother, director Joe Talbot, are caregiving for both his mother, who is in the final stages of breast cancer, and his dad who, at the moment, can’t speak and has a hard time walking.

“It was some of the most fun that we’ve had.” Talbot continued. “I’ve worked in a bunch of other kitchen jobs before and they didn’t have the same feeling. I was doing it with my best friends and even when it got stressful, it was still great seeing the same people.”

Charlie Harb, the owner of Charlie’s Cafe, set up a GoFundMe campaign to help subsidize a permanent home for Fatty Natty’s. In the meantime, Talbot continues to plan pop-ups, including at Of Mantis on Thursday nights, when Kevin Tang plans to be off-duty. 

Taqueria El Faro, another Mission-district mainstay, is up for sale. 

El Faro, one of several that claim to be the birthplace of the Mission-style burrito, is on the market after its owner, Raymunda Ramirez, decided to retire. 

The restaurant, located at 2299 Folsom St. (at 20th Street) also saw its rent nearly double starting in April.  

Ramirez has called El Faro a second home for the last 45 years — the first 20 as an employee, and the next 25 as its owner. El Faro opened in 1961 and became a San Francisco legacy business in 2024. 

Ramirez talked about selling the business in late 2024, shortly after the restaurant suffered three break-ins within a week, resulting in $25,000 in losses and damage to the storefront. 

Despite her mom being depressed about having to sell the business, Ramirez’s daughter, Patricia Kocourek, believes it is the right time.

“It’s been so many years. Her health failed,” said Kocourek. The death of Ramirez’s mother in December, the rising cost of  ingredients, and a recent knee surgery also factored in the decision to sell. 

“She works too much — 12 to 14 hours a day — she was barely at home and she barely ate.”

Kocourek said they have received offers to purchase El Faro, but not the $225,000 they hope to sell the business for.

Friendship House will train clients in environmental literacy. Also, new murals are coming to Weise Street by year’s end.

The Mission District is the recipient of seven of this year’s Community Challenge Grants, a yearly program that funds community-led neighborhood-improvement projects.

This year, the city funded 25 proposals, a $3.3 million total investment. The Mission grants will receive $938,803.

Among those: $150,000 to Mission Housing for two new murals on Wiese Street; and $133,099 for a collaboration between Friendship House, a social services nonprofit specializing in American Indian issues, and the nonprofit Roots of Success, to train transitional-age youth and members of their recovery programs and certify them as environmental specialists.

“It’s a great feeling. The grant was a competitive grant and I know that there were a lot of people who had applied. When we got the news that we were accepted, there was a cause for celebration,” said Leah Johnson, the grants and special projects coordinator at Friendship House. Johnson envisions trainees bringing knowledge from the job training back to their reservations, or going into environmental fields like landscaping or hydrology. 

The murals on Wiese Street will be a collaboration between Mission Housing, Youth Art Exchange and Asociacion Mayab, and are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.

One of the murals will be five-feet tall and 20-feet wide, and it will be painted on the yellow wall that runs parallel to Mission Graduates, near 16th Street. The design will be a collaboration between Vanessa Agana Espinosa, Mission Graduates and Joseph Lopez. 

The second will be 12 feet wide and about seven feet tall between 15th and 16th streets, to be designed by Asociacion Mayab and University of San Francisco professor Sergio De La Torre and his students. 

Fatina Ramirez, the fund development manager at Mission Housing, which owns La Fenix, an affordable housing complex that borders the alley, said the murals serve as an opportunity to collaborate with neighbors to improve street conditions in the alley. 

“While understanding that it’s not a standalone fix, it’s contributing to the attention, care and stewardship that we believe Wiese Street needs,” said Chirag Bhakta, community engagement director at Mission Housing.