The duo behind Norcina and Frankie’s is about to open a third spot on Chestnut Street. Kait Bauman and Angelo De Lorenzi plan to debut Scout, an upscale all-day cafe, in the former L’mida space on Chestnut Street in early November, rounding out what’s quickly becoming a mini restaurant empire in the Marina.
According to The San Francisco Standard, Bauman and De Lorenzi currently operate both Frankie’s cocktail bar and Norcina restaurant, and Scout represents their push into all-day service. Bauman calls Scout her third restaurant, telling sf.itsfound.com, “I’m currently opening my third restaurant, Scout,” while describing the work of making construction decisions and testing recipes for the space. The restaurant’s own site frames the project as extending the team’s reach beyond dinner, noting it is “From the team behind Norcina and Frankie’s,” per scout-sf.com.
An All-Day Format With Coffee, Lunch, and Late Nights
Scout is billed as an all-day cafe with farm-to-table Californian cuisine, built around a wood-fired oven and grill. Per the same report, construction on the space is nearly done as the opening date approaches. The restaurant’s website describes the daily rhythm as a place that “starts early with coffee, fresh pastries and the daily paper, rolls into lunch during the week and brunch on the weekends,” and says the restaurant will be “here seven days a week.”
Bauman told the Standard that Scout will stock physical newspapers for guests, a detail that fits the cafe’s unhurried, all-day pitch. The cafe will offer coffee and fresh pastries, while sourdough is set to be paired with smoked tomato-mussel butter and saffron chile, one of several hyper-seasonal touches on the planned menu.
A Menu Heavy on Wood Fire and Theatrical Flourishes
The food itself leans into the wood-fired concept that scout-sf.com describes as “centered around a wood-fired grill and cooking California cuisine with the seasons.” Planned dishes include rabbit roulade, ember-roasted pumpkin with zucchini-cashew babaganoush and chile agrodolce, and grilled prawns with chile butter and burnt citrus, according to the Standard’s reporting.
Pasta plays a central role too, with charred leek agnolotti in preserved lemon and parmesan-leek brodo, fig-stuffed gnocchi with duck liver, and mafaldine with braised short rib among the offerings. Scout’s own menu preview separately points to whole fish from the hearth, grilled tomahawks, and handmade pasta as hallmarks of the kitchen, per scout-sf.com.
A Family Connection to Sonoma Wine
Scout will have a wine list. That local focus has a family connection: Bauman’s brother and sister-in-law operate Two Shadows winery in Sonoma. Bauman has also harvested honey at their farm, according to the same report.
The Team’s Marina Footprint Keeps Growing
Scout joins Frankie’s, a cocktail bar that is a spinoff of Norcina created by Bauman and De Lorenzi, according to sfstandard.com. Frankie’s opened quietly in mid-February, on a Friday the 13th, and pours wines by the glass from 1.5-liter magnums alongside a rotating slate of eight cocktails, per Eater San Francisco. Norcina, the pork-and-pasta restaurant that started it all, opened in 2021 with just beer and wine offerings before expanding the group’s ambitions.
Eater’s earlier preview of the bar lists Frankie’s address as 3219 Pierce Street. Frankie’s is also known around the neighborhood for its namesake, Frank, a golden Labrador associated with the bar who was diagnosed with cancer and has been undergoing radiation treatment through October 30, 2026. Frank is reported to be responding well to the treatment.
With Norcina anchoring the group’s Italian roots, Frankie’s carrying the cocktail-and-magnum torch, and Scout poised to bring coffee, sourdough, and wood-fired fare to Chestnut Street starting this November, Bauman and De Lorenzi’s footprint in the Marina keeps expanding one storefront at a time.
