Che Fico team joins the Mission Rock movement — now with fine dining

If you think you know David Nayfeld, prepare to be surprised. 

The chef — who built a sizable reputation serving rustic Cal-Italian cuisine at Che Fico and a growing number of spinoffs — opens his latest restaurant, Via Aurelia, on Tuesday. But this time, he and business partner Matt Brewer have something to prove: “We want to show we’ve got range — as chefs, as operators, as restaurateurs,” Nayfeld says. 

To that end, Via Aurelia, which occupies a grand space on the ground floor of the new Visa building at the Mission Rock development, will be the duo’s most upscale project yet. Named for the ancient Roman road that connected Rome and Pisa, the restaurant will attempt to expand the aperture on how diners understand Tuscan cuisine in an elegant, refined setting. 

Nayfeld insists “fun is core” to the restaurant group’s identity (after all, “che fico” is Italian slang for “that’s cool”), but he and Brewer are itching to get back to their fine-dining roots. Before opening Che Fico in 2018, both worked at Michelin-level restaurants, including the now-closed Aqua in San Francisco and L2O in Chicago. Now, they’re looking back at those bygone dining destinations as a model for the level of hospitality they hope to offer at Via Aurelia. 

“Do you know what the most luxury ingredient is in restaurants these days?” Nayfeld asks, before answering his own question: “Humans.” 

“Labor,” Brewer clarifies.  

At Via Aurelia, diners will be greeted by both a host and a maitre d’ who will whisk away their coats before guiding them through the 68-seat main dining room, where a mosaic of stretched linen panels dampens sound and adorns the vaulted ceiling. A line of custom-built booths occupies intimate niches set into the wall, each equipped with a dedicated speaker so the volume of the music, which Nayfeld prefers “a little louder than it should be,” can be adjusted to the party’s preference. Under the glow of hand-made ceramic light fixtures and floor lamps, customers will be attended to by a team that includes front servers, captains, back servers, kitchen runners, managers, and sommeliers — a far larger front-of-house staff than most restaurants rely on today. 

The food will be more elevated, too. On one hand, Nayfeld isn’t afraid to leave some classics alone, as with the straightforward tagliatelle verde con ragù d’anatra, made with fresh ribbons of egg pasta in a hearty duck sauce. But he’s not afraid to take some poetic license by infusing the menu with what he describes as the flavors of modern Tuscany.  

For example, the bistecca alla Fiorentina, perhaps the region’s most famous dish, will swap Chianina beef for Texas-raised wagyu from Rosewood Ranch. Because the wagyu has so much more marbling, it’ll be cooked to a rosy medium and served with a meat jus sauce, “which you would never see in Tuscany.” He’s similarly putting his own chef-y touches on tortelli mugellani, amping up the traditional filled pasta dish with mascarpone and a “more decadent” meat sauce. 

Other plates, like merluzzo con porri e patate, borrow inspiration from his memories of meals enjoyed in the region — in this case, a lunch at a restaurant by the sea. At Via Aurelia, he’s serving the buttery fish with fork-smashed potatoes, confited leeks, and black truffle sauce. Some dishes include distinctly un-Italian ingredients, like tamari and miso, but he’s using versions made by producers in Tuscany. 

The biggest departure from tradition, however, will present itself at the beginning of the meal. As anyone who has traveled to the region knows, pane Toscano is baked in large round loaves and made without salt, resulting in bread that is intentionally dry and bland. “But we’ve decided we’re going to serve delicious bread here,” Nayfeld says. 

They enlisted star baker Amanda Michael of Jane the Bakery to produce slabs of a crusty bread developed specifically for the restaurant. As an example of their commitment to that throwback style of hospitality, it’ll be offered for free alongside an exclusively sourced olive oil that Nayfeld describes as exceptionally peppery. Instead of butter, they’ll serve silky, unctuous whipped lardo. 

The duo says the restaurant has been about six years in the making. They had their first conversations with the Giants, who partnered with real estate developer Tishman Speyer on the Mission Rock project, before the pandemic. As the neighborhood has come into its own in the years since, both partners have grown more confident about their investments in the city’s east side, which include both Via Aurelia and the year-old Che Fico pizzeria at Thrive City. “Everything is coming this way,” Brewer says. “So we say, let’s keep it going.”

From Via Aurelia’s patio, which is fully weatherized with heaters and sun shades, customers can look across McCovey Cove at Oracle Park, China Basin Park, and the Bay Bridge beyond. Inside, they enlisted designer Jon De La Cruz to splash muted, warm tones — terra-cotta, olive, ochre — on the walls, complemented by Florentine-inspired details, like sandstone, archways, and a custom knotted rope piece from Chinese American artist Windy Chien depicting the Italian city’s skyline. 

Stepping back from the frenzy of the imminent opening, Nayfeld and Brewer say they hope Via Aurelia will be not just another splashy restaurant debut but another sign that after a few rough years, the city is back. Considering the already amplified costs of running a restaurant here, the partners are well aware that bringing back what they see as “the Gilded Age” of San Francisco fine dining is no small task. 

But then again, it might be the right task for a pair with something to prove. “Maybe it’s crazy enough that it just might work,” Nayfeld says.