The Yerba Buena Center has a lot to offer, but it was missing something important, according to long-time Bay Area restauranteurs Don Harbison, Misty Rasche and Kevin Best (B Restaurant & Boxed Foods Company)
It didn't have a family-friendly dining experience. So when the diner space above the bowling alley became available, they grabbed it and have opened Pin Up All-Star Diner.
The restaurant features "real simple, well-prepared food" in a quick-service format, Harbison tells us. The menu includes a mix of southern comfort favorites, like fried chicken, coleslaw and baked beans, and classic American diner essentials, like giant hamburgers with toppings, and milkshakes.
Harbison's favorites: hands down, the biscuits and the fried chicken, he said. And the ranch dressing.
Everything is made from scratch, with Virginia-native Chef Ed Scheets at the helm. While Scheets has a traditional culinary background and years of experience with French and Italian cuisine, he was ready to return to simple, he said. "I wanted to go back to stuff that makes me laugh... I'm not trying to win a Michelin Star, I want people to be happy."
Harbison and his daughter, a regular at Pin Up All-Star Diner.
Many items on the menu — including the biscuits, cucumber salad and potato salad — are based on recipes Scheets and his mother prepared while he was growing up in the South, he told us.
In addition giving families a place to dine comfortably after hockey practice or exploring the Children's Creativity Museum, Pin Up All-Star Diner aims to be the neighborhood's next great sports bar. There never seem to be enough sports bars, Harbison said. And at the ones that do exist, food is an after-thought, Scheets added. With eight televisions, all sports channels available, and a beer and wine license they plan to have any game diners come to see.
Patrons have been gifting sports memorabilia to add to the walls, Harbison said, and he hopes it will soon look even more "hodge-podgy." Although, this corner will always be dedicated to the Warriors.
The only challenge will be getting people in the door.
"No one wanted these spaces," Harbison said of Pin Up All-Star Diner and the 10-year-old B Restaurant. While both restaurants are nestled inside the neighborhood's idyllic gardens, the lack of street visibility makes them difficult locations.
But not impossible, Harbison assured.
While they don't have the budget to plaster advertisements all over the area, if the food and service is on-point, he trusts that "old-school word-of-mouth" will work. And in addition to taste-testing pounds and pounds of fried chicken, he worked hard to find employees that are genuinely nice people, because "you can't teach people how to be nice" and "you can't waste any customers out here," he said.
Chef Scheets (far right) and staff.
With a very visible development boom surrounding the gardens, Harbison said they're confident that construction today will bring hungry workers, and later, new neighbors.
Pin Up All-Star Diner is open 11am-9pm weekdays. But they’ll never kick anyone out before a game ends, Harbison assured. On the weekends, expect he doors to open one hour earlier for brunch, which stars breakfast sandwiches on their signature biscuits.
