An exterior view of Tommaso’s in San Francisco.
Google Street View
Tommaso’s, a 91-year-old Italian restaurant in North Beach, may soon be evicted from its building on Kearny Street. The restaurant has received a three-day notice to pay rent or quit. If Tommaso’s fails to pull together four months’ worth of unpaid rent — a total of $40,800 — by the end of the day on Wednesday, its landlord could begin eviction proceedings.
“I’m going to be open as long as I can, you know?” Maureen “Mo” Donegan, Tommaso’s current owner, told SFGATE in a phone interview. “If they evict me, they evict me. I’m going to try and get the money together.”
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An exterior view of Tommaso’s in San Francisco on July 22, 2026.
Timothy Karoff/SFGATE
To cover back rent, Donegan has launched a GoFundMe. At the time of writing, the restaurant had raised just $1,400 of its $30,000 goal.
“If Tommaso’s has ever been part of your life — if you have celebrated here, shared a meal with loved ones, or believe San Francisco’s historic small businesses deserve to survive — I humbly ask for your support,” Donegan wrote in the GoFundMe page.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Donegan’s landlords are the Crotti family, who ran Tommaso’s for 51 years. Donegan took over the restaurant in 2025, when siblings Carmen and Agostino Crotti, and Agostino’s wife, Anna, retired. Donegan had experience running old North Beach establishments. For two years, she was the general manager of North Beach Restaurant.
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The three-day notice came as a surprise, Donegan said; Carmen Crotti had been, in her words, “an angel to me.”
Pepperoni and mushroom pizza from the wood-fired oven at Tommaso’s in San Francisco.
Pam G. & Aubany G. via Yelp
SFGATE reached out to Stuhr and Miller, the law firm representing Agostino Crotti, who is listed on the three-day notice. The firm did not respond to SFGATE in time for publication.
Tommaso’s financial troubles, Donegan explained, stem from a combination of high costs, old equipment and slow business.
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The main issue facing Tommaso’s, Donegan said, is a dearth of customers that goes all the way to the pandemic. The story, as Donegan describes it, is a familiar one: The city’s “restaurant people,” the primary market for a 91-year-old spot that sells wood-fired pizzas, skipped town during COVID, and tourism dried up as well.
Things took a turn for the worse last winter. Tommaso’s lost three weeks of business in December, when the restaurant closed for maintenance on its pizza oven. (Maintenance can’t begin until the oven cools down entirely, Donegan said, which takes 10 days.) Upon reopening, Donegan discovered that one of Tommaso’s freezers had failed, as had one of the restaurant’s refrigerators. The lost business, plus the cost of spoiled supplies and repairs, left Tommaso’s without the money to cover its January rent.
An interior view of Tommaso’s in San Francisco.
Aubany G. via Yelp
In the coming months, she got back on her feet. Then came May, when, in Donegan’s words, “the business in the city just died.” June, usually one of the busiest months, was “dismal” for business, she said, and the World Cup games in Santa Clara failed to bring in customers. By the time the July fog rolled in, it was vacation season. But Tommaso’s had missed its May, June and July rent payments.
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Tommaso’s old, loyal customers didn’t return after Donegan took over the business, either, Donegan said.
“One guy actually said, ‘I heard you didn’t f—k it up, so I came in,’” she recalled.
Tommaso’s, which was founded in 1935, is North Beach’s oldest Italian restaurant. It’s known to be one of Francis Ford Coppola’s haunts, and has what might be the West Coast’s first wood-fired brick oven. In 2023, then-owner Agostino Crotti told the San Francisco Standard that it inspired Alice Waters to build a similar oven at Chez Panisse. According to that interview, Tommaso’s cast of famous customers also included George Lucas, Jerry Brown and Herb Caen.
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