Magazines » March/April 2009 Issue » Pub of the Month: La Trappe Cafe
Should you ever find yourself walking away from the bustling tourist traffic of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and toward the intersection of Greenwich Street and Columbus Avenue, pop into La Trappe Café. The city’s newest Belgian-inspired establishment has colorful history that stretches well beyond the two years this café and bar has been around.
Mike Azzalini, owner of La Trappe, is just one of his lineage to occupy the building at 800 Greenwich Street. According to his grandmother, Teresa DeMattei,a 91-year-old San Francisco native, Mike’s great-grandfather, Joseph Foppiano, purchased the building with another family member in 1928. It has been dressed up as a dance studio, a dentist’s office, The Rolling Wheels Club -- a hot rod club run by Mike’s uncle in the ’50s -- and even a storage spot where Foppiano aged wine during Prohibition. More recently, the building housed a series of Italian restaurants before arriving at its current incarnation, a Belgian bistro and Trappist lounge.
Those past lives aren’t easily discerned when you’re standing in the doorway eyeing the quaint, ground-floor dining area with its simply dressed tables. Travel downstairs to the dimly lit beer bar and, amid exposed brick and thick wooden beams, you’re even further removed from fountain shops and dentist’s offices.
“I wanted La Trappe to look like brasseries and beer bars from places like Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent all wrapped into one,” Azzalini remembers. “I took things from memories and pictures I have from when I spent time there. We had so much to work with already; a dark basement, brick, and a ton of charm that was yearning for a Belgian bar.”
While Euro design sets the stage, La Trappe’s 50-page beer menu is the marquee act. According to Azzalini’s business partner Michael Moore, the downstairs bar stocks 250 bottled beers -- 280 with seasonal influxes -- plus 19 rotating taps, which recently featured De Ranke XX Bitter, Russian River Sanctification, Maudite, and Val-Dieu Grand Cru.
Azallini and Moore opt to keep advertising to word-of-mouth in an effort to cut down on overhead and keep the beer price affordable. But their quickly amassed following hasn’t missed a beat; the basement bar bustles on weekends.
“Our following is driven by the locals around us,” explains Moore. “It’s very common to hear ‘my friend who lives nearby told me I had to come.’” That’s a friend worth keeping.
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This article originally appeared in the March/April 2009 Issue of DRAFT Magazine
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