Early to Rise operated as a pop-up restaurant from 2016 to 2021. Following a successful investment raise last April, Chef Andrew shut down service to focus on evolving ETR into a fully-realized brick and mortar restaurant.
"...but I never got to go. What was it like?"
Depending on when you might've joined us, you either saw ETR as an elaborate, bacchanalian, gloves-off family-style brunch party (pre-pandemic) or a counter-service destination for handmade bagels, donuts and rotating specials during the pandemic. No matter when you may have walked through our doors, however, you were surely greeted with a meal built from warm hearts and 100% scratch-made ingredients.
That's right. If you ate bacon with us, we cured it and smoked it. French toast? We made the challah. That bottle of hot sauce on the table? Fermented, blended and bottled in-house. Same goes for the butter, preserves, ham, you name it. There was also the occasional spontaneous dance party.
"So where are you headed from here?"
In short, we are excited to enter a new era. The years we spent as a pop-up allowed us the time and space not just to work on recipes, but (more importantly) to talk about them with you.
Remember all those little conversations we had about when to add a little lemon juice, more cheese in the grits and exactly how thick to cut the bacon? We listened, took notes and adjusted. Things may seem quiet now, but rest assured that we are hard at work bringing together all the pieces of this complex, beautiful experience we've crafted for you over the years. The pop-up days were about making "bricks" and now we're using them to build a house - a true San Francisco institution that will be a place of welcoming, comfort, and celebration for you for years to come.
2023 is our year and we're going to come out swinging. Stay tuned through our Instagram account @earlytorisesf and by signing up on our mailing list below. Chef Andrew still writes all of this himself, so emails are only sent when we've got something to say. Thank you all so very much for taking us this far. Incredible things are in the works!
Stay tuned and cheers to the future.