Iconic Tadich Grill to Open Second Location in Washington, D.C.
Officials with Tadich Grill in San Francisco said they had a major announcement to make on Monday – and speculation ran rampant. But now, the cat’s out of the bag with the announcement of a planned second location in the nation’s capital.
California’s oldest restaurant, which has been serving local seafood since 1849, is partnering with ICON INC to bring its classic seafood grill concept to the heart of Washington, D.C., right between the White House and Capitol Hill on Pennsylvania Avenue. “We want to stress that Tadich Grill in San Francisco will not change. And this will not be a duplicate,” said Tadich Grill CEO and owner Michael Buich. “I’m not sure you can ever really duplicate a historic site like this. But we’ll bring a lot of the same concepts with us to the East Coast and a lot of the seafood that has become so familiar to San Francisco diners.”
The new site will be over 7,300-square-feet, but an exact floor plan is still under development. Buich and Rick Powers, managing partner and COO of Tadich Grill Development Company LLC, will oversee the new location, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2014. “We really felt like this was the perfect location,” said Powers. “That concept of a grill is prevalent in Washington, D.C. and along the East Coast, but nothing like the concept we are bringing with Tadich Grill.”
Gerald Centioli is CEO of ICON INC, a Seattle-based company that specializes in the development of bona fide restaurant icons. The company’s first partnership was with Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc. of Miami Beach, Florida. The partnership in 1999 led to the opening of another location in Chicago in 2000 and a spot in Las Vegas in 2004. Centioli echoed the sentiments of Buich and Powers. “This is such a classic restaurant and I really think the concept fits perfectly in Washington, D.C. It’s an area that accepts all types of restaurants,” Centioli said. “We thought about areas like New York, but that can be such a hard market to break into. And in a spot like Boston, they already have their own very unique and distinct seafood culture. So after weighing all of the options, we decided there wasn’t a better place to build out this iconic restaurant than in our nation’s capital.”
San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr, who’s great grandfather was John Tadich, founder of Tadich Grill, was visibly emotional about the news. “For those in the know, this is just simply Tadich. It has such a history, especially in my family,” Suhr said. “I may be biased, but this is the best restaurant in San Francisco. It is the original homemade restaurant and I think this is a case of manifest destiny – what’s best in San Francisco heading to the East Coast.”
The new location of Tadich Grill will be located at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Photo Credit: Tadich Grill
