Popular takeout sushi shop brings its biggest location to North Beach

If you’d asked David Liu a few years ago where he thought he’d be slinging sushi in 2025, he probably would have told you Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. That’s where he opened his first restaurant, Ebiko, in 2022. “Going into it, my main focus was just that I wanted to own my own business,” he says. “I thought I’d be working at that location until the end of my life.” 

But the universe had its own plans for the entrepreneur. Because after opening a second location of his popular takeout sushi restaurant last year in downtown San Francisco, Liu finds himself gearing up to add a third. 

Liu expects to open Ebiko’s third outpost in mid-August at 526 Columbus Ave. in North Beach. He’s been working on the space for nearly a year, after walking by a vacant storefront — formerly home to Caffe Roma, which shuttered in 2107 — and thinking the neighborhood could use an infusion of energy. Though he launched Ebiko in the East Bay, Liu lives in the city and has family in the neighborhoods around North Beach. Plus, he’s a big fan of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana — “If it wasn’t for sushi, I’d be really into pizza” — and couldn’t resist an opportunity to open practically across the street. 

The new location won’t be a carbon copy of its predecessors. It’s not only the largest Ebiko yet but also the first to offer seating and beer and sake. “One of the main things customers tell us is, ‘Oh, we wish that there was somewhere to sit,’” Liu says, “and we’re always recommending a park or a bench.” The North Beach restaurant will have half a dozen tables, and diners are more than welcome to take their seared salmon aburi nigiri to go. 

With the larger kitchen, Liu plans to expand the sashimi offerings, which wasn’t possible at the limited space downtown. He says the first San Francisco Ebiko lends itself to the weekday lunch crowd, which means he has to prep everything before the rush hits at 11 a.m. He hopes to have more time to break down fish and prep donburi and maki rolls at the North Beach location, which will operate seven days a week and stay open until at least 5 p.m. He expects the new Ebiko to become a lunch stop for North Beach residents who work from home and a weekend destination for picnickers headed to Washington Square Park. 

The long run-up to the North Beach debut is because the space was “gutted down to the studs” for a full renovation. Considering the city’s reputation for frustratingly hard-to-navigate systems for small business owners, Liu was pleasantly surprised to find the process of getting the space ready to be relatively painless. 

He hadn’t expected to expand his burgeoning takeout empire. But this city’s nearly insatiable appetite for raw fish — from all-you-can-eat bonazas to high-end omakase — demanded it. “I didn’t think beyond the first one,” Liu says. “But now that we’re in San Francisco, it seems like there’s more than enough people who want sushi.”