North Beach may be a San Francisco neighborhood having a moment, but people flock there every weekend for a taste of the past. Lines form at Sotto Mare long before the restaurant even opens, and they remain until closing every Saturday night. The majority of the diners are there for one dish: cioppino, a hearty, flavorful, soul-warming seafood stew thought to have been originated by Italian immigrant fishermen in San Francisco in the mid-19th century.
Bay Area public radio station KQED investigated the “fishy origins” of the dish’s alleged history in 2018 and found evidence of a cioppino recipe in The Refugees’ Cook Book, which was published in 1906 as a “fundraising effort,” KQED reported, following the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire earlier that year. Debunking the commonly published myth that the name came from Italian fishermen who would “chip in” their unsold catch to make a potluck dish, the KQED story drew a connection to ciuppin, a Northern Italian fish soup.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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The main requirement for making cioppino is that the base have white wine and tomato. Sotto Mare’s version, which the menu says is “enough for two” but feeds four with a side of sourdough, benefits from the carby boost of penne pasta. But the specific inclusion of Dungeness crab, which has more sweet, luscious meat than other kinds of crab found outside the region, lets you know that you’re in Northern California, eating cioppino as its creators intended. Dungeness season typically starts in November, and the seafood replaces turkey on many “Crabsgiving” tables. Cioppino means it’s time to party.•
Tamara Palmer is an author, ghostwriter and DJ from San Francisco. She publishes California Eating, a newsletter, website and small-batch print zine.
