First, I want to ask about this whole concept of dinner and a movie – what was the inspiration behind this idea for Foreign Cinema?
The idea was to fuse food and film together in an environment that was more unique and dynamic. We pride ourselves on having a wonderful curated program of cocktails and specially selected wines and a menu that’s written every day. The cinder block wall in the back of the courtyard was the inspiration. Twenty years ago it was sort of unheard of to do food and film in one closed area in one unique kind of experience. The early idea was to create a gastropub in an outdoor garden with films showing. This was the dream at the time but it became a more elaborate restaurant once it opened. The space demanded more of a restaurant experience. John and I really wanted to perfect that experience.
The restaurant is celebrating its 20th year. Congratulations! What are some differences in the restaurant from when it opened until now?
Oh, holy cow. Thank you! Well, I know that the restaurant didn’t have a name on it. So it was very hard for clients to find. John and I really thought that needed to change and needed some kind of flash signage on the building. So it became much easier to find and to talk about so lots of fundamentals changed. The dining room was set up with some diners with their backs to the screen so that wasn’t good. We rearranged the tables in the courtyard to be a way for all diners to look at the screen. The restaurant has really grown up. There were a lot of fundamentals that had to be learned when the restaurant was brand new and lots of hard times. We’ve been through quite a few recessions and what we try and do is just deliver our hearts and our passion in a place that feels like an escape for diners and a place to come and forget about the worries of the day and partake in good conversation and a glass of wine and good food to share and just leave your troubles behind for ninety minutes or two hours.
So where do you see foreign cinema in the next twenty years? What are some hopes that you have or maybe even some future plans that you have for the restaurant?
Well in the next decade, I think we want to continue to foster goodwill in the community and continue to support the community, neighborhood organizations and charities. We’ve got a few plans working on the upper courtyard to reinvigorate that outdoor space into a brand new outdoor area that would be built up with more furniture and more heating. For the space next door, we’d love it to be a worker owned “co-op” if you will that is part of the Foreign Cinema family but feeds the neighborhood. It would be employee owned and run which would give us a great amount of pleasure.
How are the films that are played at Foreign Cinema chosen? Do you have an all time favorite film that you’ve played?
Well we have to choose from a list of 35 millimeter available film. Film theaters used to show 35 millimeter, but they’ve all kind of slowly gone to digital, which is a much different kind of a look and feel to the film. When theaters close we’re able to go and get parts from various theaters and use them here. DVDs have a particular look and feel, but 35 millimeter use the art of light. So we’re investing in that and we choose from the special lists. My all time favorite movie.. I might have to say is “Rosemary’s Baby.”
You offer such a unique experience for everyone, especially for a date night. How do you and your partner John celebrate a date night?
You know, we may just take a drive and get away for a day. Recently we had a date night going to see a film and getting a little Japanese food. We got to see “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” at the Berkeley Landmark Theater.
How did you and John meet?
We met at a restaurant in San Francisco called Vicolo. We were both in school. I was a painting major and he was actually a journalist with a proclivity for design and architecture. So it was sort of a mitzvah, you know, when we met. It was kind of cosmic so here we are thirty-five years later.
How did we get here to the success of Foreign Cinema? Tell me maybe a little bit about yours and John’s professional backgrounds.
Well, it was a long time in the works. We’ve both been cooking for a while in the Bay area and we both were interested in restaurants and then collectively we were together at Zuni working with our mentor chef, Judy Rogers. We then left to create a restaurant consulting business that took us around the world. It made us kind of help people solve all their restaurant problems. We did that for seven years. So when we came back from doing that we had this opportunity to come to Foreign Cinema and the stars were in alignment. We did not know where we were going, but we just put our hearts and our souls into it every day and over these twenty years it’s added up to something significant. The restaurant is popular, it’s relevant and that’s all we could hope for, but we’re not arrogant. We’re very humble and sometimes you just knock on wood a lot and you keep up at it and you don’t quit. I think that’s the key to success. And to try and make every day a brand new day and to inspire your staff to bring invigoration to the program and help just achieve something very small that’s new every day. Like a new cocktail, a new little biodynamic wine or a new napkin on the arm that has insignia that’s compostable and little wonderful things that keep making the place very groovy to be. That’s what we strive to do. We just invest in it every day. We want it to be fun to work at and we just want our guests to fall in love with it. We want them to feel like it’s irresistible.
What are your favorite dishes from the menu and which do you think are the most popular among customers?
Well, when you’ve written the menu and your guests can’t decide what to order because everything sounds good then we know we’ve done our job. I love it when we do…well…My favorite thing on the menu is basically everything. We love oysters so every day we have a selection between fourteen and eighteen oysters available. Everything on the menu is what I want to eat, so the dish has to sound good to me. We strive to have two fresh fish, a vegetarian entree and lots of vegetables as an offering. But then there’s plenty of savory rich things like homemade pasta and baked goat cheese and really beautiful grilled steak and a really beautiful cured pork chop. These are the things that are just our favorite things to eat. We love risotto and we love hand made pastas. My favorite appetizer would be fried oysters when in season. I do love are our roast chicken that can have exotic spices on them – the Marrakech roast chicken or the Angelica Roast Chicken and of course the fried chicken is really a favorite thing of mine paired with a stone fruit chutney or an autumn fruit chutney.
Your menu also offers a variety of wine options. Do you have one that you think really stands out on the wine list?
I mean they all stand out. That’s why they’re listed. They’re curated with that in mind and they’re curated with flavor and biodynamics in mind, meaning they’re grown with other organic processes so that the wine is au naturel. The wine list is extensive. We have forty wines by the glass every day. So there’s something for everybody. My favorite wine right now would be Scribe Pinot Noir 2017. It’s what I want to drink right now. But every wine is chosen for not only the unusually beautiful flavors, but also the story behind the winemakers and the fact that they’re not a wine that you can find everywhere. We try and offer inexpensive glasses that are delicious as well as rarer wine.
So you’ve developed restaurants outside of the US and Hong Kong. What are the most important takeaways from this? What did you learn during that process?
I think that we learned that everything is solvable and it’s very good to identify a problem and then make sure to treat the cause and not the symptom and to gather as much data as possible and observe, observe the reality. Sometimes that takes time. Try not to be reactionary and really be analytical about how you’re going about the work. Probably the most important takeaway is to gain the trust of your staff and to listen and then to assess reality. Always act out of a place of humility, not arrogance, very down to earth. Be able to talk to the GM as equally as the dishwasher or the chef or floor manager or the host – just to really treat everybody with respect and listen to what they have to say. When you do this enough, wisdom comes because problems are reoccurring in restaurants. So you know, when things occur, you go, “Oh yeah, there’s a couple of ways we could go about it. We can go about it like this or like this or like that. Let’s figure out the best system for this place”.
You do your best to bring all that you can to your employees and your customers. So what are some ways that Foreign Cinema has been able to bring some of this positivity to the community?
Well you have to look at the neighborhood and listen to what they need. We donate gift certificates and cookbooks and experiences to nursery schools all over the neighborhood. We work with a lot of charities in the Mission and in San Francisco in general. We’ve raised over $700,000 to various institutions. Through our anniversary parties or events, we try and make sure that we have given back to the city that allowed us to prosper.
There are so many unique restaurants in San Francisco – what do you think makes Foreign Cinema stand out from all these other restaurants?
Oh, dear. Well, there are a lot of good ones. Ours is a very unique place in terms of its geography and setting. This is hard because so many people do such a great job. I know that everyone is working so hard – all of our brothers and sisters who are in the restaurant business are working every day to make their restaurant great. I really think it has to do with the spirit and I really do think it’s just a unique piece of real estate that really couldn’t exist anywhere else other than the Mission in this beautiful micro climate. We’re just trying to curate a really beautiful experience that your senses are delighted by and overcome by through the music we choose, the films that we curate, the wine list and the food. We’re really trying to do seduce our clients every night. These are all things that add up to a great kind of experience. I think that John and I try and keep ourselves always humbled by issues and that we maintain a sense of humor about the challenges that face all operators. We try and keep blissful and impart that sense to the guest
// Make sure to follow Foreign Cinema on Instagram here. 2534 Mission St, Mission, foreigncinema.com; photography by Tin Dinh.
