El Buen Comer, the Mexico City-inspired restaurant that has served saucy chilaquiles and homestyle guisados out of its Mission Street home for a decade, is opening a second location at Thrive City near the Chase Center. The expansion would mark the first time owner Isabel Caudillo has grown beyond her original Bernal Heights restaurant since it opened in 2016.
A new location for El Buen Comer is headed to the heart of Golden State Warriors and Valkyries territory, according to bizjournals.com. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that El Buen Comer filed a business license registration for 1 Warriors Way, Suite 205, with the filing landing this week according to city records. That address is the same space last occupied by Taco Primo, and the Chronicle reports that El Buen Comer's owners have signed a lease for it, with the restaurant possibly opening as soon as December per San Francisco Business Times.
From a Living Room to a Mission Street Storefront
Caudillo, a native of Mexico City, cooks the food she was raised with, according to El Buen Comer's own account of her story. At the heart of the menu are guisados, the staple of Mexico City home cooking, and the restaurant makes its dishes from scratch, using organic masa and hand-rolling its enchiladas. Her very first restaurant, as the Chronicle noted in an earlier profile, opened in 2001, and it was called her living room.
Caudillo began offering that homestyle cooking out of her San Francisco apartment that same year before enrolling in the La Cocina incubator program, which assists low-income, women and immigrant entrepreneurs in building food businesses. She later expanded to the Noe Valley Farmers Market, where the Chronicle reported she set up a stand starting in 2008. By April 2016, the paper reported that Caudillo's first brick-and-mortar restaurant was set to open in Bernal Heights the following month with 45 seats, terra-cotta bowls imported from Mexico, a beer and wine license, and waiters — a storefront that ultimately landed on Mission Street.
A Decade of Acclaim on Mission Street
That restaurant, now at 3435 Mission St., has built a following for guisados like pork ribs slowly simmered in salsa verde, served with nopales and warm, handmade corn tortillas, according to the MICHELIN Guide, which notes her menu highlights the cooking of her native Mexico City. El Buen Comer says it has been recognized in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide and was named one of the New York Times' 25 Best Restaurants in San Francisco. Former Chronicle critic Soleil Ho also praised the restaurant's handmade tortillas and its quesadilla with smoky shredded chicken tinga and chipotle sauce, writing that it's the kind of cooking that makes people feel like they've come home, even when they're thousands of miles from it.
El Buen Comer is owned and operated by Caudillo and her son Vlad, according to the Chronicle's reporting, though the pair did not respond to the paper's request for comment on the Thrive City plans.
Joining a Growing Food Lineup Near the Arena
At Thrive City, El Buen Comer will join Fikscue, an Alameda Indo-Tex barbecue spot, and Golden Rule, a bar from the team behind Che Fico and Via Aurelia, per the Chronicle's reporting. The owners of Noodle in a Haystack are also opening a casual noodle bar at Thrive City next year. The complex was designated a full-time entertainment zone this past September, a designation that allows bars and restaurants there to serve alcoholic beverages to-go.
El Buen Comer would take over the space most recently occupied by Taco Primo, a fast-casual taqueria that itself got its start as a pop-up at the Snug in December 2024 before opening its own storefront and then debuting at Thrive City's 1 Warriors Way, Suite 205, according to Eater SF. That restaurant, from the team behind the Snug and Little Shucker with chef Adrian Garcia in the kitchen, served tacos, burritos, bowls, salads and quesadillas with chicken, al pastor, braised beef and vegan jackfruit options. What exactly El Buen Comer will serve at the new location, and precisely when its doors will open, remains to be seen.
