The old restaurant model is broken. How is Original Joe’s still killing it?

On an otherwise sleepy Monday, I am one of the many people waiting at 5 p.m. outside Little Original Joe’s, the fifth restaurant from the three-generation, family-run Original Joe’s group. LOJ (as it’s inscribed on the corner of the cocktail napkins) opened at the end of May on a prime corner of Chestnut Street in the Marina. Reservations, which have become expected, are not taken. Still, I did not get the every-table-will-be-full memo. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have believed it.

The pandemic left the restaurant industry quaking and rethinking the conventional business model. The San Francisco Chronicle reported this year that restaurant sales were down 20% from 2019. Restaurateurs have been scrambling: shrinking the number of seats, leaning heavily on delivery, closing for lunch, cutting down on labor, and offering prix-fixe menus to keep food costs predictable.

But Little Original Joe’s is defying the new normal in decidedly old-fashioned ways. It is full-service. It is big, with around 100 seats, and requires a lot of human power to operate. Staff, in black-and-white uniforms, are everywhere, running around beneath statement chandeliers. In broad daylight, people are drinking voluminous martinis at the bar. Seated in the long banquettes, twenty-somethings are taking selfies. There are huge windows, high ceilings, and an open kitchen with a grill fueled by shovelfuls of the Lazzari mesquite charcoal the owners, the Duggan family, have used since the first Original Joe’s opened in the Tenderloin almost 90 years ago. 

The effusive energy emanates all the way out the front door, giving the vibe of late-1990s, first-dot-com-boom San Francisco. When it’s my turn to check in, I walk up to the ship prow of a host stand. Behind it, a real, live, helpful human smiles back. 

In our beat-up city, which had to create a $6 million marketing campaign to make people love us again, this place feels like a sign that San Francisco is indeed worth loving. 

Amazingly, this is not just an LOJ phenomenon. This alternate reality exists consistently at all of the Duggans’ five, going on six, restaurants. So what is it they know that everybody else does not?

The Duggans have one undeniable advantage: Original Joe’s is a part of our city’s fabric. It has seen San Francisco through World War II; the recessions of the ’70s, ’80s, and 2000s; and Covid. Ask any SF native, and you’ll likely hear stories of celebrations at the original location, opened in 1937 on Taylor Street by Croatian immigrant Tony Rodin.

In 2007, a fire destroyed the building. Thinking it was the end, SFGate wrote, “[Original Joe’s] should have died as the Tenderloin deteriorated into a place where junkies lay sprawled across the sidewalk.”

But the beloved restaurant endured, triumphantly relocating in 2012 across from Washington Square Park in North Beach. This Original Joe’s location continues to do an astounding 800 covers on a Friday, the same as before the pandemic — and the Duggans say the numbers are growing, easily making it one of the most successful restaurants in the city.

It took four years for the Duggans to expand from there. In 2016, they opened a second Original Joe’s in the iconic midcentury Daly City space owned by their founder’s former partner, who, for more than 50 years, ran it as Joe’s of Westlake. But most of Original Joe’s new expansion has brazenly occurred during the economically tender years that started in 2020. Since then, in the face of a full-blown hospitality recession, the Duggans have opened three restaurants, with another on the way.

The first was in 2020, when the Duggans opened Little Original Joe’s in West Portal, a pizza and salad takeout selling Italian provisions. At the beginning of this year, they dared to go off-brand and launched Elena’s, an unashamedly Mexican-American restaurant. The minute the 100-seater opened — complete with a wood-fired oven, towering indoor ficus trees, and flickering gas lamps — it was like the second coming of fajitas. You still can’t get in.

The acumen for restaurant operations has been passed down: Marie, 77, and John Sr., 82, who ran Joe’s for years, are semi-retired. Their children, Elena, 52, and brother John Jr., 50, have taken over operations. Marie recalls that after the fire at the Tenderloin location, she and her husband were spent: “The kids said to us, ‘You two just sit down now. Relax.’” 

Today, it is “the kids” who are driving the expansion. They just ask that their parents kindly reserve judgment until each new location is open — at least, as much as possible.

Running a successful restaurant in a city notorious for some of the country’s highest rents, thickest red tape, highest minimum wage, and most capricious group of diners is not easy, no matter your roots. To open Little Original Joe’s in the Marina, the Duggans secured a space in 2021 and spent a year waiting to break ground due to city “complications.” In total, it took three years to open. “We’re psychos,” John Jr. jokes about their tenacity.

Over coffee before lunch service in the Marina, John Jr. reveals the “secret power” behind his and sister Elena’s drive: “We are siblings who love each other,” he says without irony. He and Elena call each other “best friends” and, if pressed to reveal evidence of any discord, will only squeak out a tame story about a fight they once had in public. 

Still, they make an effort to stay in their lanes. Elena oversees the food and, with her flecked-green eagle eyes, directs all of the design, down to the water glasses (which, by the way, are mismatched during our interview and making her nuts). John Jr., who is 6-foot-7 and instantly recognizable to all Original Joe’s regulars, oversees the front and back of the house. “We all have the same mantra,” he says: “Care about your customer, care about your customer.”

While restaurants nationwide have trimmed costs to the bone, often at the expense of hospitality, Original Joe’s has continued to invest in its staff. Though sometimes, they get the benefit of free labor: Recently, after taking a break due to a “tough year” of health problems, octagenarian John Sr. was back in action, doing what he loves most: meeting and greeting guests at three locations in a day.

We live in a time when diners are often asked to genuflect at the altar of a chef. The less typical dynamic is that the restaurant is there first and foremost to serve the guests, which makes Original Joe’s smallest service touches endearing. There’s the offer of an ice bucket to chill your white wine, for instance. Or the presence of a landline — gasp — that employees actually answer.

Wanting to test the latter out, I forgo hopping on OpenTable to make a reservation at the North Beach location and try calling the number listed on the website. Lo and behold, a woman answers, using the kind of pleasantries I recall from days of yore. (“We look forward to seeing you.”) Honestly, it feels like a small miracle of human connection.

Elena laughs about my shock at receiving this kind of service: “Want to see Mom and Dad get violent? Call a restaurant and have no one answer.”

Elena and John Jr. are clear that they are not part of the conversation many food cognoscenti are having — they do not do hip, micro-regional, or farm-to-table. Of the upscale Italian restaurants of San Francisco — the Cotognas, the Flour + Waters, the Delfinas, the A16s — they say, with all respect, “We don’t even consider ourselves in that arena.” 

Their menu, which is extensive, is not led by a name chef or brow-furrowing haiku of disparate ingredients. Barring a critical Chronicle review of Elena’s that they are still smarting from, they “haven’t been reviewed since Michael Bauer.”

John Jr. and Elena are conscious of the fact that it’s comfort, not cuisine, that they are serving. The portions are generous, things you can sink into: a solid chicken Milanese topped with arugula; straightforward ravioli; the same rectangular, charbroiled burger with grilled onions on baguette that has been served since the first location. To be clear, they often do these dishes very well; the lamb chops with salsa verde I have at the North Beach location are excellent.

“We have a lot of cliches,” says Elena, “but we try to deliver them on a beautiful plate.” Zucchini fries, for instance, are a new addition in the Marina. “My dad has been eating zucchini fries at Sam’s Grill forever,” says Elena, who decided to put a lighter spin on the classically breaded wedges on the LOJ menu. “Anywhere he sees a zucchini fry, he orders them.” 

The fries represent more than an appetizer. The night I dine at Little Original Joe’s, a ridiculously tall pile of skinny zucchini strips dusted with flour, fried lightly, showered in Parmesan, and served cheekily on a silver pedestal is dropped at the table. I reach for a fry without high expectations. Then another. Until I can’t stop. They are not an experience, they are fun — and require little of me other than pure enjoyment.

Unlike restaurant groups driven purely by capitalistic impulses, the Duggans have more at stake. They have a legacy to protect. The family members live and breathe their restaurants, and their homes and workspaces overlap.

John Jr. and his wife and three kids live in the West Portal duplex where the siblings grew up; Marie and John Sr. live downstairs. (“If you must know,” John Jr. says, “my mother-in-law is also visiting right now, and she’s sleeping on the floor.”)

Elena lives within walking distance in Ingleside Terrace with her husband and two daughters; the third just left for the University of Michigan. (“I’m going to have to seek psychological help,” Marie says about her oldest granddaughter flying the coop.)

All of the Duggans have Sunday dinner together at Elena’s house. Keeping on brand, over Labor Day weekend, Marie cooked up lasagne, chicken cutlets, and Italian sausage with peppers. 

“Original Joe’s is like a part of our body, a part of our being,” says Marie, sitting in a booth at the Westlake location one afternoon. Wearing button clip-on earrings and a maroon tweed jacket, she alternates between effusive gestures and dramatic pauses, touching my hand for effect. 

To the server who brings her a cup of minestrone — something she’s had at Original Joe’s since “she was a baby” — Marie asks, “How are you, my little angel?” A stooped gentleman in a blue Adidas tracksuit comes by our table to pay his respects. In the private dining room, a memorial service is going on for a family friend. Marie still claims to know the names of 50% of the customers.

Born at Leavenworth in the Tenderloin, when the neighborhood was less “edgy,” Marie grew up at Original Joe’s, working alongside her father from 1984 to 2004. “I learned to walk there. I knew all the waiters; I was their little girl,” she says. “And little by little, I became the boss.” 

The family extends into the staff, many of whom are lifers, such as Nicky Merdita, a busser at North Beach who has spent 49 years with the company. “A lot of our waiters came to us after the war. Post-war, everybody was happy to be here. It was a wonderful time,” Marie reflects.

She continues to function as the very entertaining gatekeeper of the Original Joe’s story, training managers on the restaurant’s history, leading them through the hallway of North Beach, adorned with photos of her parents on dates around the city, Joe Montana, and the king of Jordan donning an Original Joe’s shirt.

It might seem like the Original Joe’s restaurants are set on automatic. But a brand built on nostalgia can easily be tampered with and lose its sense of authenticity, especially as it continues to expand. “If we’re one click off,” John Jr. says, “we could become a caricature.”

Elena and John Jr. clearly are watching out for that. (If the playlist has too much Sinatra, they are on it.) But they also have an eye on expansion, continuing to build something new from something historic. Even if it takes them to the burbs this time around. Their next project, set for 2025, is a 9,000-square-foot, 300-seat beast in tony Walnut Creek. However, they aren’t doing any of this with an exit plan: They intend for all of their restaurants to be open for a quarter century. 

“We were born and raised in San Francisco. We’re not going anywhere,” says John Jr., before stating the obvious. “We’re going to die here.”