An Iconic San Francisco Seafood Restaurant Is Being Torn Down After Closing In 2020

It's always tough when a legendary restaurant closes its doors, and after years of trying to find a new owner, one of San Francisco's most well-known seafood restaurants is officially going away for good. Alioto's, a Sicilian seafood spot, occupied a prime location on  Fisherman's Wharf for more than 80 years. Carrying on the traditions of Italian seafood purveyors in San Francisco that created iconic dishes like cioppino, Alioto's was famous for selling fresh seafood, clam chowder, lobster, and crab to generations of both locals and tourists, making it one of the oldest restaurants in the city. Unfortunately it was forced to close in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, and over the last five years has never managed to reopen.

Plans to demolish the restaurant were announced last year and work tearing down the structure housing Alioto's started this week. After shutting its doors in 2020, the restaurant officially went out of business in 2022. Talking to the San Francisco Chronicle, the director of the Port Authority of San Francisco says the agency spent years trying to find someone to take over the historic restaurant. However the dilapidated state of the structure, its massive size (11,000 square-feet over three floors), and high renovation estimates made it impossible to find a buyer. Alioto's restaurant was the oldest remaining building on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, having been rebuilt in 1957 after a fire.

While the restaurant dates to 1938, the business was officially started by Sicilian immigrant Nunzio Alioto as a seafood stand in 1925. After moving into a stall on the Wharf it started selling meals to day laborers, and eventually expanded to selling shrimp and crab cocktails, along with fresh seafood. When Alioto died in 1933 his wife Rose took over, making Alioto's the first woman-run business on the Wharf. Alioto's Restaurant had claimed Rose was actually the creator of the original cioppino recipe, however a historian has found recipes predating Alioto's by several decades.

At the time of its closing Alioto's was still a family business, making it San Francisco's oldest family-run restaurant. On the restaurant's official Facebook page, the family posted a goodbye message, saying, "As this chapter in our family's history closes, I truly hope that future storytellers of Fisherman's Wharf remember us not just with nostalgia, but with appreciation for the immigrant dream and family perseverance we embodied." A fitting tribute to a big loss for the San Francisco restaurant community.

The demolition of Alioto's is part of a multi-million dollar plan to renovate Fisherman's Wharf, which is still a major tourist attraction. In place of Alioto's a public plaza will be built, which will be adjacent to a new set of businesses on the Wharf. Hopefully this space can nurture a new generation of seafood restaurants on the Wharf.