FIOR D’ ITALIA CLOSED ITS doors in May 2012 to sad howls from the San Francisco culinary community. The restaurant was already venerable by then: For 126 years, it had served plates of pasta and veal to presidents and Pavarotti. It wasn’t a bad run for a place that got its start at a brothel in 1886. 

But San Francisco only went without Fior D’ Italia for about six months. The restaurant reopened in December 2012, in the same spot below the San Remo Hotel on a quiet North Beach street. Regulars rushed up to the long dark bar near the entrance, while once again dapper waiters glided across the soft carpeted floor with platters of osso buco and zabaglione with berries.