After serving untold thousands of its famous “hot salads,” surviving a shootout between two motorcycle clubs and starring in a restaurant makeover show, Estrada’s Restaurant in Daly City ended a 102-year run Sunday.
Bernadette Aggen and Julio Mercedes, the wife and husband who have owned and run the Mission Street restaurant for the past dozen years, welcomed sad regulars, curious first-timers and nostalgia seekers — along with Super Bowl fans — for the Mexican restaurant’s final day.
Aggen expected to serve hundreds of hot salads — a mound of grilled meat topped with beans, a pile of lettuce and a sliced avocado, dressed with a vinegary spicy dressing and served on a cast-iron plate. Although it’s listed on the menu as a “sizzling tostada,” generations of Estrada’s diners know it by its original name.
“It’s a volcano-like spectacle of a layered salad,” Aggen said Sunday between seating guests, taking orders, serving tables and tending bar. Just a handful of diners were seated at lunch, but their numbers grew to dozens as the Super Bowl kickoff neared.
The couple announced Estrada’s closure a couple of weeks ago on social media. Aggen said Sunday that the hard work of running a restaurant had just become too much.
“It’s us wanting to slow down and do different things and not have to work as hard as we do every day,” said Aggen, who described her role as owner, manager, server, bartender, janitor, marketer and trainer. Mercedes ran the kitchen but also served food and mixed drinks behind the bar.
Robert Alvarez, 46, of San Francisco, and Johanna Corbett, 53, of Pacifica, sat at the side of the bar just before Super Bowl kickoff, commiserating over the closure of their usual hangout.
“We’re regulars,” Alvarez said. “It’s like our home. We’ve been coming here for eight to 10 years and we’re going to miss it.”
Marty Cobb, 60, of San Francisco, has visited Estrada’s on and off for maybe 30 years, and even worked there for a couple of years in the late 1970s. She just learned Sunday morning that the restaurant was closing, grabbed her husband “and raced right over.”
She said she’ll miss the food, the staff and the hot salad the most.
“The hot salad and the margaritas were a must,” she said. “I loved this place.”
Estrada’s was once part of a small family-owned chain that Louisa Estrada founded in Visalia (Tulare County) in 1914. Her children opened outposts of Estrada’s Spanish Kitchen around California, including the one in Daly City, which opened in 1917.
Estrada’s drew attention, both good and bad, in recent years. A shootout that injured two Hell’s Angels took place outside the restaurant in 2013, which helped prompt Aggen to write to the Food Network and ask to participate in the restaurant makeover show, “Restaurant Impossible.”
“We wanted to make it to 100,” Aggen said. “And we did.”
The restaurant has been sold, she said, and will become a Middle Eastern eatery. As for her future, Aggen said, “I don’t have to come in and mop the floors tomorrow.”
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Estrada-s-a-beloved-Daly-City-restaurant-13585982.php 2019-02-04 01:42:07Z
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