The Light’s Still On

Picture this: It’s San Francisco in 1932 on a foggy night in early May. Isadore “Izzy” Gomez is holding court on Pacific Street. Inside his saloon, it’s standing room only. Painters, printers, and poets are elbow-to-elbow, swapping gossip over thick-cut steaks and one too many rounds of gin. Wine is flowing, the piano is out of tune and nobody is paying for anything they can’t talk their way out of. 

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It was this unruly communal spirit Sam Duvall set out to revive when he opened Izzy’s Steaks and Chops in the city’s Marina District in 1987. It’s a steakhouse soft around the edges; the kind of place where regulars linger, where the light feels warm even when it’s not, where the city’s ghosts don’t haunt so much as hang out. 

Earlier this year, nearly four decades after opening, the beloved Steiner Street classic underwent a measured renovation, marking New York-based design firm Gachot's first hospitality project in the Bay Area. Leading the transformation was the founder’s daughter Samantha DuVall Bechtel, who aimed to honor her father’s legacy while drawing Izzy’s gently into the present. 

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Akin to Keen’s in Midtown Manhattan, “you can feel the history,” says Christine Gachot, who runs the studio with her husband and co-founder John Gachot. “The first time I had dinner at Izzy’s, I recognized immediately that it was San Fran’s version of the NYC greats I know and love,” she recalls. That’s why, she continues, “we were careful to preserve the sense of nostalgia that makes the space special in the first place.” “We sifted through matchbooks, business cards, postcards, artwork, notes—memorabilia that once filled the original Izzy’s in every imaginable format,” adds John. More than 127 of those relics now live upstairs in the restaurant’s second-floor gallery. 

And then there’s the mural. Painted by Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Benedict, it winds across the dining room like a cinematic reel. A sweeping tribute to the Barbary coast, it features portraits of everyone from Gomez, the larger-than-life saloonkeeper who started it all, to 1930s burlesque icon Sally Rand, and of course, DuVall himself.

“What a life,” Benedicts says, wishing he could meet the man whose legacy now encircles the room. “The history, the food, the characters, the theater, the bohemian life, and the waterfront are all subjects near to my heart.” As a child, DuVall Bechtel would tag along with her father on tomato runs through the Mission and follow him into the heart of Chinatown in search of BBQ pork buns to share with staff, absorbing what it meant to care for a space and the people inside it. Today, a love letter to the city from one Sam to another—the legend lives on. 

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Izzy's Steaks and Chops' is now open at 3345 Steiner St, San Francisco, CA 94123.