It’s not an overstatement to say there’s nowhere in San Francisco quite like Bar Brucato. In fact, there’s likely nothing else like it anywhere in the country. The cozy new restaurant, serving thoughtful California fare, just happens to be perched over the only distillery in San Francisco open to the public. A distillery specializing in amaros, nonetheless. In a time when N/A spirits are trending and restaurants are struggling, it’s a bold experiment. And an awesome one.

Before Brucato opened, the last distillery/restaurant in the city proper was the massive, impersonal, and short-lived Seven Stills in Mission Bay. Dinner at Bar Brucato feels the opposite of that: The 23 tanks and one big still are housed on the ground level, tucked away from the loft-level dining room, which is both familial and feminine. Outfitted with 26 rattan-backed seats, a plinth covered in root-beer-colored Fireclay tile, and effervescent flower arrangements, the dining room — the evening beaming down through a skylight — feels very intimate.

Chip King, the former chef de cuisine at Merchant Roots, is cooking a menu that’s as easy-going and Californian as the expression of the spirits: tomato-glazed octopus with perfectly tender Iacopi Farms butter beans; hearty slabs of toast slathered in sunchokes and showered with sunflower seeds and crispy sunchoke chips; house-made saffron spaghetti with local mackerel, pine nuts, and fennel; grilled steak with harissa.

On a Friday night, the bartender pours me a concoction of gin, orgeat, fresh lime, and Chaparral, a signature Brucato amaro that some have compared to chartreuse. The cocktail, garnished with enough mint to make it up my nose, is delicious, but there’s something extra intoxicating about knowing that the next batch of the amaro — a wiccan stew made of grape brandy macerated with the medicinal, native herb yerba santa, plus bay, spearmint, and cardamom — is downstairs, resting in barrels for its future reserve release.

Husband-and-wife team Sierra and James Clark, the founders of Brucato, came up with the idea for the restaurant as a vehicle for showcasing their three amaros. While most equate the Italian-born bittersweet liqueur with Fernet, negronis, or old guys milling around a bocce court, a wide variety of the botanical aperitifs are made all over the U.S. (In fact, Brucato is one of a handful of companies making them in California; since 2016, St. George Spirits in Alameda has been making Bruto Americano, an amaro sometimes compared to Campari.)

But the Clarks wanted to do more. At the end of 2021, they purchased the Double Rainbow ice cream factory on South Van Ness, right before it hits the Central Freeway, to transform it into a small distillery, transferring their license from being a “rectifier” (confined to altering existing spirits) to a craft distiller, which allows them sell directly to consumers, operate a tasting room, and make gin and other distilled spirits. Building a distillery in the city turned out to involve a lot of hurdles, but at the end of March, they finally opened their doors.

Though the Clarks, who live in the Castro, have two young daughters, Brucato Amaro was their middle child, born in 2018 in a 400-square-foot SoMa warehouse. And like many new parents, neither Sierra nor James had any operating instructions; they were learning on the job.

Though Sierra had briefly worked as an editor at Saveur magazine, the closest she’d gotten to making amaro was living in Italy for a couple years and getting a Ph.D. in food studies from NYU (for which she wrote a rather heady dissertation on American bourbon: “its terroir, how it’s regulated, and how it’s perceived socially”). James, meanwhile, was managing the U.S. debt at the Treasury Department as part of the Obama administration. When that era ended, the Clarks had to do some soul searching. The next step was not the most obvious.

They landed on starting a spirits company that reflects the terroir of California, where they were both raised. The granddaughter of philanthropists David Packard, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, and wife Lucile, Sierra has deep roots in the Bay Area. She and James landed on amaro in part because it would allow them to express their home state’s amazing bounty. 

Fittingly, they named it after John Brucato, the man who in 1943 founded the San Francisco Farmers Market, which eventually became the Alemany Farmers Market. After a lot of tinkering, the Clarks landed on three signature blends: the Chaparral; Woodlands, with elderberry and cocoa nibs; and Orchards, which is like fall in a bottle, full of black walnuts, cinnamon, dried Blenheim apricots from Gibson Farm in Hollister and persimmons from Bella Viva Orchards near Modesto. This year, they’ll also release a thinkier amaro, Fields, made of artichoke, fenugreek, rhubarb root, toasted dandelion root, and dill.

Naturally, there has been trial and error. Long ago, Sierra got a fair warning about the fickleness of amaro. “An expert in the field once told me, ‘Good luck, because they’re the hardest.’ You’re using so many types of ingredients, and each has its own fats and sugars and proteins and behaves uniquely. You have to keep the flavors, while avoiding letting weird stuff happen, like murkiness and spiderwebs.”

For instance, they initially aimed to release an amaro called Meadows with a green almond base in the spirit of nocino (which is made with green walnuts), plus a mix of rose petals, citrus flowers, lavender, and chamomile. What sounded romantic ended up tasting like “over-steeped tea.” However, they loved the green almond base, which is currently infusing the distillery with its scent, and intend to make it into a spirit called Spring Almond.

Though the Clarks are very hands-on — Brucato is all of a four-person operation — they knew they’d need help to expand their portfolio into distilled spirits, which is why they hired Adam Timney, formerly the chef-partner of Starbelly, to operate the restaurant and distillery, and Brandon Conley, a former whiskey maker who will work as the distillery director.

On a Wednesday morning, Conley has just finished a “sacrificial run,” a secular term that has nothing to do with Catholicism. It simply means that a spirit (in this case, grape brandy) has been surrendered for the sake of “cleaning” the shiny, 2,000-liter still for what’s to come next — in this case, gin, Brucato’s first foray into something that’s not amaro.

Gin — also full of botanicals — was a natural next step. Theirs contains juniper, of course, but also angelica, coriander, Meyer lemon, California bay, and Artemisia califonica (or white sage, as it’s commonly known). In honor of their neighborhood, it will be called Mission Gin, and come out this May.

In June, they will release Oro y Fierro — a nod to the city’s motto (“oro en paz, fierro en guerra,” or “gold in peace, iron in war”) — will be an orange-and-chile liqueur made from 600 pounds of kumquats, oranges peels, Calabrian chiles and a touch of fiery chile de arbol for a punchy heat. Though the amaros are available around the country, the gin and the kumquat liqueur will at first be available for purchase only at the distillery, which makes them seem extra special.

Conley, who relocated from Ohio to San Francisco for the job, is wide-eyed about the access he suddenly has to ingredients in his own backyard. “Fruit and herbs are just everywhere here,” he says, “and they smell so good. I’m constantly rubbing them between my fingers and tasting them — I’m a bit of a weirdo about it.” He hands me some of the white sage, harvested near San Jose, and I find myself doing the same, crushing it in my hand and inhaling the musty, piney aroma which has been called “cowboy cologne” over and over again. Maybe it is Brucato’s marketing getting to me, but somehow it smells like California.