If there is a playbook for success in San Francisco’s ruthless restaurant world, Margherita Sagan and Sheryl Rogat, the owners of Piccino, have long defied it. First, to state the obvious, they are women in an industry that continues to lack top-dog female representation. Additionally, they didn’t come up through the ranks: With absolutely zero restaurant experience between them, they opened Piccino almost 20 years ago in Dogpatch, which, at the time, was hardly a name-brand hood. 

That was 2006, before neighboring Mission Bay exploded. Before Instagram and influencers. Before microregional menus. It was the year Yelp launched. (Don’t get Sagan started on the entitlement of one-star Yelpers.) Back then, Sagan, who was born in Tuscany, was 50 — an age when most people are starting to fantasize about retiring to an island. She laughs. “In many ways, we’re just two crazy women.”

Today, Sagan is 70, and Rogat is 58. And with the March opening of a second Piccino in the Presidio and plans for a third next year in Marin, it’s clear they are just getting started. 

Piccino Presidio’s menu has the same pizzas and delicious chiocciole pasta with fennel-pork sausage and kale as the original, but that’s where the similarities begin and end. Whereas the Dogpatch Piccino is cozy, the new location in the former Sessions space on the Lucasfilm campus is handsome but huge, with 230 seats, a main dining room and bar, two private rooms, and a big front porch. 

For an impromptu date, you’d be safe to arrive reservationless and grab a stool at the bar, which sits in the middle of the dining room, with a window to the open kitchen. This would be my choice. Though, if it’s a nice day and lunchtime, you’re going to want to vie for a chair on the patio — luckily, there are 90 of them — which is surrounded by redwoods, palms, and, when I visited, blossoming trees blowing a confetti of pink petals. The interior feels intentionally nature-y, too, with moss-green accents and slat-wood ceilings with globe pendants casting a warm light. A wall in the back room has a photo mural of a forest. 

A meal at Piccino Presidio will feel familiar to Dogpatch regulars: thoughtful and unfussy — a pretty, hyperseasonal Cal-Ital-style menu, the kind from the days of yore (or at least 2006). While Piccino has always been a pleasure, it’s never been the hippest kid on the block. Peppered with the types who set down their reading glasses as part of the place setting, the crowd here follows. 

This isn’t to say executive chef Daniella Banchero doesn’t take some measured risks. A salad of chilled artichoke hearts and sweet, smoky grilled turnips is punctuated with bits of cured black olives; straddling winter and spring, it is quirky but oddly good. More classic is beef carpaccio with arugula, a couple of plump, briny anchovies, and a blizzard of Parmesan. A stinging-nettle pizza with garlic cream and braised leeks is pitch-perfect — though I douse it in chiles. When I ask about the mystery green sauce sitting beneath a striped bass, the accommodating server not only wrangles the details from the chef (a puree of spinach, green onions, and olive oil), he practically gives us the ounce measurements.

The Presidio location was not something they saw coming; after weathering the hellish last five years, the two were ready to hang it up. “The pandemic was the worst experience of my life — being responsible for 50-plus employees through that time. I was completely defeated,” Sagan says. But then, Lucasfilm folks came calling and were so gracious and welcoming, Sagan and Rogat couldn’t refuse. “Sometimes things happen when you least expect it,” says Rogat.

Speaking of, Sagan’s husband, Loring, is the cofounder and partner in Build, a firm that does residential development in San Francisco. He and Margherita recently bought a decrepit waterfront building in Mill Valley, at 242 Redwood Highway Frontage Road, where the Grateful Dead once practiced and still functions as the base for seaplane tours. It will house Piccino No. 3.

Like everything Rogat and Sagan do, the Mill Valley project has been a little nuts, as any property dealing with water elements will be. But with the building permits secured, they hope things are on track for 2026. One thing is for sure: It will have pizza, pasta, and amazing bay views. Soon to have three restaurants to their name, the two women might very well see each other out of this life together. “We’re like sisters. We bicker; we’re joyful,” says Rogat. “And we’ll probably be buried next to each other.”