This cozy Mission bar is the perfect place to ride out the atmospheric river

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What happens when you open a bar, only to see it succeed a little too much? Amid the hospitality industry’s endless struggles, it’s a problem some restaurateurs might crawl through broken Pyrex to have. But for chef Seth Stowaway and his cozy Mission bar Liliana, it meant scrapping the concept and starting fresh.

Stowaway’s Michelin-starred restaurant Osito opened in December 2021 with 30 seats, a roaring fire, and a tasting menu dedicated to game birds. Liliana, which debuted next door at the same time, was intended to be a casual sibling suited for the everyday, a labor of love from a gregarious chef who has been candid about his struggles with substance abuse and homelessness. But over time, the bar’s popularity took him by surprise. “I think people thought it was a nicer place than it was meant to be,” Stowaway told The Standard. 

So, early this year, he turned Liliana into the Bar at Osito. It lasted a matter of weeks. Then the Bar Agricole team — with whom Stowaway worked for a decade — used the space as a pop-up for the acclaimed institution’s final nomadic phase. Now the lodge-like, one-notch-above-minimalist Bar at Osito is back, and with the arrival of the season’s first atmospheric river, its gray interior may be the best place in San Francisco to enjoy an elegant cocktail and some à la carte bites.

If Osito is, in Stowaway’s words, an “exploration of Northern California through the lens of fire, preservation, and seasonality,” then the Bar at Osito takes the seasonal element and runs with it. Some drinks feel like a distillation of autumn itself: the $18 Pan American Clipper (Calvados, grenadine, lemon, and absinthe) and the $16 Stone Fence (Kilchoman scotch, Lonely Mountain Pink Lady apples, and lemon) could be second cousins, their shared lineage traced through the apple in the Calvados. 

The green fairy pops up again in an unlikely place: a spin on a martini, probably the last cocktail in the book that would cry out for a jolt of diesel-strength wormwood. Yet the $16 Turf Cocktail (gin, dry vermouth, maraschino, and absinthe) is no testosterone-fueled dare. It’s potent but balanced, with a drawn-out finish, as the almond-y maraschino and herbaceous absinthe take over. 

Given the chef’s 14 years of sobriety, it’s notable that there’s only one zero-proof offering on the menu at any time — during my visit, it was a housemade ginger beer for $10. That limited selection isn’t out of indifference so much as Stowaway’s fear of getting lost down a rabbit hole. “I have, like, an onslaught of preserved things,” he said of the housemade ingredients he uses in the rotating nonalcoholic option. “But I don’t want to put it on the menu, because we would just change all of them, every single day.”

Bearded, enthusiastic, and prone to giggling, Stowaway isn’t shy about his opinions. (Summer squash needs to go away. Espresso martinis are annoying.) He connects with the land at a granular level, requesting pomegranates from one farm’s 120-year-old tree because the seeds are especially red. They appear on a loaf of grilled sourdough that in the low light could be mistaken for a wheel of baked brie. It’s perfect for ripping apart and dunking into a dip made from kuri squash — a winter vegetable! — and yet more pomegranate, like a flatbread. Overall, the menu is compact, with only three items in each of the “small” and “large” categories, plus some fun miscellany like gooey “Cubano” profiteroles and Tsar Nicoulai caviar.

When I describe the Bar at Osito’s atmosphere as “maximally adult,” Stowaway laughs, because at least a few times a week, someone asks him who the owner is. “I’m like, ‘It’s me. Can you believe it?’” he said, adding, “Yeah, this old crackhead from the TL’s got good taste!” 

Rain lashed the north-facing windows as another band of the storm hit the Mission. Although neither visible nor audible, the fire in the kitchen made its presence known.