{"id":148741,"date":"2026-01-25T07:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T07:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/148741\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T07:47:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T07:47:16","slug":"bravo-pizza-new-owners-promise-a-good-love-letter-for-s-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/148741\/","title":{"rendered":"Bravo Pizza new owners promise \u2018a good love letter\u2019 for S.F."},"content":{"rendered":"

Bravo Pizza<\/a>, an Excelsior staple serving deep-dish slices and Italian-American fare since 1963, reopened on Thursday after being shuttered for two months. And the decades-old pizzeria is under new management.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The place is due for a comeback, said Sam Hernandez, the new co-owner of Bravo who bought the restaurant with his best friend Jason Yu in December 2025. The duo are well aware that Bravo is flooded with \u201cbreak-up posts<\/a>\u201d reviews on Yelp from disappointed erstwhile diners over the past year, and they are ready to turn things around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna give them a good love letter,\u201d Hernandez said on Wednesday evening, after finishing a taste test of their new lemon pepper and garlic parmesan chicken wings. The chef, Jimmy Prokopos, is the son of Peter Prokopos, a former owner of Bravo. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna invite them back,\u201d Hernandez said of the customers.<\/p>\n

Hernandez, a 43-year-old Excelsior native, and Yu, a 34-year-old who grew up in Chinatown and moved to the Excelsior about 13 years ago, said they are trying to preserve the old flavors of the 64-year-old pizzeria with a new twist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pizzas will be made from the same two-pound dough that defined Bravo as the pioneer in San Franciscan-style deep-dish pizza, but with a garlic-crust option. Along with the two flavors of chicken wings they were trying Wednesday night, they will roll out two other flavors, buffalo and honey garlic butter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Bravo Pizza, an Excelsior staple, reopened on Jan. 22. Photo by Xueer Lu. Jan. 16, 2026.<\/p>\n

There will soon be a new pink gumball machine in the place of the old pink gumball machine \u2014 just like the one Hernandez used to put a quarter in to watch the little gumball fall.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the empty restaurant that they hoped would fill with customers the next day, Yu and Hernandez couldn\u2019t help but reminisce about how they got here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hernandez recalled a night last fall when he got a call from his cousin, who had stopped by Bravo for a slice after the 49ers game. \u201cHe looked at the place and he was like \u2018this place looks like a dump,\u2019\u201dHernandez said, recalling the conversation. His cousin told him that he went in and asked the owner at the time if he would be interested in selling. \u201c\u2018He said yes,\u2019\u201d Hernandez\u2019s cousin told him.<\/p>\n

Hernandez, who lives just a few blocks away, said he \u201cflew over here\u201d to get confirmation that the store was indeed up for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the second thing? Calling up his best friend Jay (Jason Yu) who he always described as \u201cambitious\u201d and a \u201chard worker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first, Yu said, he was \u201cexcited\u201d but the idea was also \u201cscary.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, he did previously spend $200,000<\/a> trying to open a soft-serve matcha ice cream shop in the Mission District. Yu had to abandon the ice cream concept due to mounting permitting and legal costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Hernandez, who had been Yu\u2019s \u201cear\u201d during the whole matcha fiasco, was able to convince Yu, who once swore<\/a> in the news that he would never open a business in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBro, everything\u2019s grandfathered in. We don\u2019t have to do nothing to the place,\u201d Hernandez told Yu. \u201cAll of the licenses, all of the permits stay with us. All we gotta do is come in and start working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yu trusted Hernandez. It brings him a bit of comfort knowing that this time, he doesn\u2019t have to start the place from scratch and Bravo Pizza has already made a name for itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this place has a lot of history and has always been here for a long time,\u201d Yu said. \u201cSo I was like, maybe I\u2019ll give it another chance because I\u2019m still in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TwoJason Yu (left) and Sam Hernandez (right), new owners of Bravo Pizza, were excited for the shop\u2019s reopening. Photo by Xueer Lu. Jan. 21, 2026.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the opening, the duo seemed confident and excited. They have a few ideas: giving out a lot of free samples to customers after the Thursday soft opening, offering free slices to businesses nearby to let them know this is a good lunch spot, and a free pizza for any order of 10 pizzas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, America loves a comeback story,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cWe may not be able to give you what your grandma gave you, but we\u2019ll give you something special and it\u2019ll be good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bravo Pizza, an Excelsior staple serving deep-dish slices and Italian-American fare since 1963, reopened on Thursday after being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[43500,101,103,102,104,106,105,73766],"class_list":{"0":"post-148741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-excelsior","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news","15":"tag-small-business-profiles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}