If you love food and dining out, the news can get daunting. Every week there’s an updated list of closing classics: One Market, Fog City, Jeanne d’ Arc, Saylor’s, Marin Joe’s. The Four Riders of the Restaurant Apocalypse rage on: Pandemic Hangover, Insane Insurance, Uncooperative Landlords, and an Uncertain Economy.
What makes West Pier resident Maureen (Mo) Donegan think she can buck the trend?
In January 2025, Mo took over Tommaso’s, a 90-year-old North Beach legacy business. Famous for its Italian comfort food and the first wood-fired brick oven on the West Coast, this quintessential Kearny Street stop has only had three previous owners. And now there’s Mo.
“I believe in San Francisco,” she says. “I’ve put in 39 years in the City’s restaurant business and no matter what happens, San Francisco always comes back. And Mayor Lurie is doing an amazing job!”
Mo adds, “I’m just a steward. My job is to take care best I can — of a tradition, a craft, and a concern for customers and employees.”
That doesn’t mean Mo isn’t adding her own touches: clever lighting that shows off the historic murals and up-to-the-minute dishes that play up the cozy space’s authentic assets, like its oven.
Standing by that august oven, which needs to be fed oak, all day every day, leading to its pet name “Il Castoro” or “The Beaver” for its appetite for wood, Mo muses on the uses to which she puts it, way beyond its popular pizzas. “Number 9, the red/green/white pizza, an homage to the Italian flag, is selling like crazy, but now we also make our desserts in-house, in-oven!” That’s crème brûlée or chocolate mousse cake. Mo’s also added hearth-born entrees, like the Two-Day Marinated Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder with Smashed Potatoes that recreates a Sunday lunch she once had in Rome.
Tweaking the décor, the wine list, and a time-honored menu doesn’t leave Mo much time to enjoy her own village of West Pier. Still, she savors her late-night returns home and the long walk down the pier — serenaded by mating marine mammals, past solar lights posted in succulents. She draws the strength to be a happy warrior in the world of restaurant roulette from the tenacity of houseboat people.
“You see your neighbors here. No one pulls into a garage. And walks into a house. On a houseboat the farther down the pier you live, the more people you know, not just walking past. We stop and visit.” And share and savor and steward.
