Bartavelle Coffee & Wine Bar

We’re here making coffee and slinging porridge and pastries today, tomorrow and Saturday from 8AM to 1PM as 86 Toast!, a temporary cafe. Mosey on over!

Our Swan Song party last Sunday was organized by our friends Yoko and Kayoko (), Steve (), MK () and Joe (.labor), and they each put in many hours of their precious time to make it all happen. We are so immensely grateful!

Our community REALLY showed up for us, with all of the vendors volunteering their time and food and beverages. Now it’s our turn to encourage you all to go support them!

made mapo tofu with fresh dooboo from . went all out with a beautiful and intricate stuffed squid dish, chirashi and more. .is.daytrip made a delicious focaccia stuffed with lots of ingredients that we still had in our pantry. Carlo of and grilled pork skewers seasoned with donated spices, while Kelsie and her team served negroni spagliato cocktails at the bar. Dominica of made gorgeous tostadas. and brought the most perfect cake and pastry respectively. hosted the event, ran the raffle and silent auctions, and poured excellent a sakes. showed up with some NA beverage options and ended up working the whole event. And DJs Chaz Bear ) and Andy Cabic () set the vibe all afternoon with a crucial assist from Joe Rice ().

We also want to thank all the volunteers, including several of our team that come to pour gazpacho and look super cool while doing it. And the MANY businesses, makers, artists and kind humans who contributed gift cards, artworks, signed books, concert tickets, wine, and services:

, Jesse Schlesinger, , .cristi.studio .works.sf .sobolewski Richard Misrach

📸: .photo

Special guest star Cole and some pictures he took of some lovely pastries from ! Pictured here: butter croissants, pear + ricotta muffins (gf), sweet and savory hand pies (peach + hazelnut / eggplant + tomato jam), chocolate chip cookies. Not pictured but also available: sesame caramel coffee cake!

86 Toast!
Coffee with Samuel and Laura

Hours this week:
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8-1

coffee from
patries from
teas from

Next week’s hours likely be the same but we’ll keep y’all posted!

Thank you! Looking forward ~

Our Swan Song party is next Sunday, 10/13, and there are still tickets available! There’s a link in our bio to purchase. A ticket gets you entry into the party, with lots of delicious bites, treats and drinks from fabulous local businesses, a raffle ticket to win gift certificates and beautiful items made by friends of ours, and two excellent DJ sets from Andy Cabic () and Chaz Bear (). There will also be a silent auction for some very special items (see below in comments).

We feel so honored and grateful to all of our friends in the small business community who have organized this party for us and who are donating their labor, food, beverages, gift cards, etc. The proceeds from this event will help us finish meeting our gofundme goal and finish meeting our obligations to our vendors, as well as help relieve some of the pernicious and high interest debt that we incurred building out the space and trying to keep it going this past year.

Thanks to all the amazing support we’ve already received we have been letting ourselves dream about different potential outcomes. This is such an amazing community we’re part of, and we really all need to support each other to survive these times. If you have the means please check out and support all of the businesses listed below. We can’t wait to be able to pay this forward and support them as needed. Thank you all so much!

FOOD AND BEVERAGE

is.daytrip












RAFFLE PRIZES (One raffle per ticket)
Bolita Masa - Gift card
Bombera - Gift card
Chiha Hair - Haircut
Fava - Gift card
Good Luck Bakery - Gift card
Ippuku - Dinner for two
Lulu - Gift cards
Minimo - Gift certificate for 2 wine tastings & tinned fish plate
Oakland Yard - Wine tasting for two groups of four
Oaktown Spice Shop - Gift Card
Prima Vini - Gift card
Ramen Shop - Gift card
Sesame Tiny Bakery - Cake gift cards
Soba Ichi - Gift cards
Standard Fare - Gift card

Continued in comments . . .

86 toast! Coffee with Samuel and Laura

Friday and Saturday from 8-1

coffee
pastries
Porridge, sweet or savory

See you tomorrow? Next week’s hours TBA . . .

86 toast!

What: coffee w/ Samuel and Laura at Bartavelle

When: Friday + Saturday from 8-1 (next week’s hours TBA)

Coffee from
Pastries from
Porridge! Sweet or savory

As we figure out what our options are and learn how to close a business, we still have the keys to 1621 San Pablo Avenue, and we’ve been missing everyone. So I figured, why not do a scrappy little coffee and pastry service? It’d be nice to all be together again in the space, even if it’s temporary and in a different context. You all made our last week of Bartavelle service so incredibly special - if slightly overwhelming - and we’re not quite ready to say goodbye.

To be clear, this does not mean Bartavelle is reopening. We will sadly not be offering the Persian Breakfast, tomato tartine, etc., etc. And we’ll be missing the team dearly and hoping they all stop by for coffee and treats.

For those of you who came to Bartavelle in the beginning, this might feel familiar - the Summer before we opened in 2012 some of our friends parked their coffee cart on our patio and I made coffee with them while we tried to get the doors open. Perhaps being behind the bar again will help me feel grounded while the future seems so nebulous? And it’s sweet that I get to do it with my partner Laura - we met a couple years ago through the cute dutch door at the annex, and, well, she’s the best.

So . . . hope to see you Friday or Saturday? Please be gentle, there will only be two of us working and we want to make sure everyone gets a really nice drink!

With love,

Samuel

We’re throwing a huge fundraising party! Fabulous DJs! Delicious bites and drinks! Raffle prizes! A silent auction featuring works by local artist and makers! Link in the bio to buy tickets 💕

A powerhouse team of small food business owners have helped us organize this event to meet our gofundme goal, the purpose of which is to pay off all our vendors and meet some other outstanding debt obligations.

We want to thank , , and for spending so much of their precious time on this and to all the vendors who are participating and donating - our community is so freaking beautiful and we’re so privileged to be a part of it.

We’re grieving and missing our team and regulars very much, but also trying to look forward and imagine what the future could look like, either for Bartavelle or for ourselves as individuals. In the short term we’re planning to do a very simple coffee service - stay tuned for an announcement later this week!

With love and deep gratitude,

Samuel and Suzanne

Hello everybody,

We are still gobsmacked at the response to the news of our closure last week. You all showed up for us in such a big way; patiently waiting in lines that snaked through the parking lot and down the block every day; sharing heartbreakingly beautiful stories about your experiences at Bartavelle over the years; checking in on us individually; bringing us treats and cards; tipping our staff as outrageously as we hoped and they deserve; and getting us within sight of our gofundme goal in less than a week of overwhelming generosity.

A reminder that the gofundme is to make sure we can make our last payroll and pay our vendors - it will not save the business - not in its current form at least. That said, we still do need to reach our goal to make sure we can gracefully transition to whatever comes next, whether it’s selling the business and all assets or doing something way simpler in the space. We’re planning ng a fundraiser / part for October 13th - we’ll announce the details tomorrow!

We’ve really felt the love and appreciation this past week, and it makes all of this more sweet and less bitter. Thank you all so very much!

There are so many conflicting emotions right now, but the predominant one is that we’re already missing our sweet team and all of you! It feels wrong to be in the empty space making phone calls and looking at spreadsheets. We’d rather be making you coffee and thinking about what music we should queue up next . . . but alas.

We are now in a weird limbo phase of closing down the business, with so many decisions to make and so many details to attend to. We don’t know what the future holds yet, but we’ll let you all know when we do. Our love for this community has only grown this past week, and we hope to see your faces again soon.

With love,

Samuel and Suzanne

CORRECTED HOURS this week - we had erroneously written that we open earlier on Sunday than is the case.

You guys, we can’t even begin to tell you how much it means to us that the community has shown up for us in such a big way this week. The gofundme is going better than we could have ever imagined, and the lines have been through the parking lot almost all day every day. Our staff have been absolutely incredible, not only keeping up with the high volume but doing it with grace, (gallows) humor, love and style. It might sound weird to say given the circumstances, but we are feeling very lucky, and very loved.

Tonight is our last Bar Sardine service, from 5-9. It’s gonna be a party! No wine by the glass - bottles only, no corkage! You can always take the rest home. Simple but delicious menu of gazpacho, brandade, various anchovy dishes, eggs, tapas, cheese plate, etc. Come on down!

HOURS THIS WEEK:

We’re open 8-3 every day for cafe service (kitchen closes at 2pm). Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we will reopen at 5 for bar sardine. 5-9pm wine bar vibes.

Thank you for all the love and support y’all. We’re doing our best not to run out of everything early but y’all are making our last week our busiest maybe ever! Our team is absolutely crushing it this week, as always. Please show them your appreciation by tipping as much as you can afford to - it goes to the full staff except for the owners and they all get an equal share.

With love,

Bartavelle

actual footage of us receiving all of your love and support today

Thank you all for the incredibly overwhelming and beautiful comments and messages yesterday and today. We feel really weird about asking for help this way, but also believe that what we do is more than just a capitalist enterprise and worthy of community support. We want to make sure we can at least meet our more solemn and sacred obligations and go out on a high note! Love you all!

Dear community,

With breaking hearts and boundless gratitude we have to let you know that, barring a miracle*, Bartavelle is going out of business, and very soon. After nearly twelve years of cortados and toscanas, our last day of service will be a week from tomorrow: Sunday, September 15th. We hope to see many of you here tomorrow and for our last week, both day and night.

We expect this may come as a big shock to many of you, but the fact is that even a seemingly busy restaurant is operating on razor thin margins and it’s gotten exponentially harder since the pandemic. The specifics are as harrowing as they are mundane - suffice it to say we’re not big fans of capitalism, and the feeling seems to be mutual.

Suzanne and I (Samuel) first want to acknowledge and thank our incredible team, both past and present. They are all so talented, smart, creative and emotionally invested in each other, our customers, and our broader community. They care more deeply than we even knew before sharing the news with them yesterday, and that’s saying a lot. If you have the means, please support them directly by coming in and tipping outrageously - 100% will go to the staff, front and back of house, distributed equally. If you are a restaurant owner / manager / other employer and are hiring, consider everyone to have our most glowing endorsement, and let us know so we can connect you!

Continued in comments . . .

We have a special guest DJ tomorrow night: Andy Cabic . Friday 9/5 from 6-9PM. Andy is one of our favorite Bay Area musicians who also has an absolutely incredible record collection - it’ll be a real treat!

Bar Sardine is OPEN! We’re featuring a beautiful rosé from tonight that’s in this month’s wine club. We have a couple new menu items tonight - a delicious cheese plate -ricotta w/ marjoram, olive oil, and mason served with peaches, honey and bread - and a summer bean salad of fresh cranberry beans, haricots verts, corn, tomatoes, and lettuces w/ thyme shallot vinaigrette + crunchy breadcrumbs!

Not pictures but also fabulous: pan con tomate, salami sandwich, all the anchovies, tapas, etc!

Wine club pickup tonight! We’ll be pouring one of the wine club wines by the glass: cuvée zero rosé - it’s very delicious! Hope to see you all tonight!