Every weekend in Oakland, chef Maria Elena Esquivel’s Mexican-American brunch spot Chica was packed. Tables at the small, 6-year-old shop were covered with plates full of Huevo’s rancheros and Esquivel’s popular chilaquiles — making Chica’s closure in September a surprise to many regulars.

“People really made an effort to come and eat with us even though we were in this very small cafe that was a bit out of the way,” Esquivel recalls.

After a short break, Esquivel is now ready to start the new chapter of her restaurant. The company reappears as Xica in San Francisco on Monday, March 6, where it’s taking over the expansive former home of Italian restaurant Il Fornaio near the Embarcadero. There, Esquivel will continue to offer their most popular brunch offerings, with their cheeky chilaquiles taking the lead.

The restaurant still reflects Esquivel’s Chicana upbringing, experiencing Mexican customs and dishes at home while also engaging with a diverse cultural landscape surrounding her home country of Oakland and the greater Bay Area. The brunch menu at the counter nods to this movement between cultures with dishes like pozole, chicken and waffles and eggs Benedict.

Owner and chef Maria Elena Esquivel makes chilaquiles in her new restaurant Xica. The dish is one of their most popular.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Coffee from Proyecto Díaz Cafe, a San Leandro-based micro-roaster that supplies seasonal batches of single-origin beans from Mexico, will be available during brunch and lunch hours. Special drinks include a Mazapan Latte and a Dirty Horchata.

In addition to brunch, Xica offers a lunch menu at the counter. Classic Mexican foods like tacos, quesadillas, and “mexi bowls” — filled with Mexican rice, beans, vegetables, and meat — which first drew people to the restaurant’s earliest version, will all be available.

The new restaurant lands on Levi’s Plaza, the 9.4-acre office campus home to 18 companies, including the headquarters of Levi Strauss & Co., which employs approximately 3,400 people. The surrounding park area was designed by the well-known landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

The 5,000-square-foot restaurant, which is several times larger than their 20-seat Oakland restaurant, will seat a total of 130 in the main dining room, alfresco area, bar area and a private dining room. The 85-seat dining room features a large mural depicting several narrative and cultural scenes personally affecting Esquivel: her mother laughing with delight; a water goddess representing movement and power; a monarch butterfly flying from southern Mexico through an invisible border into the golden poppy fields of California.

The main dining room at the Xica in San Francisco, seating 85. The restaurant’s new location is much larger than its previous Oakland location.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

For Esquivel, moving to Battery Street is a homecoming. The restaurant started out in 2015 as a fast-casual chica out of a window on nearby Green Street, selling tacos, burritos, and mexi bowls that were popular with workers at the nearby square. It moved to the Oakland premises in 2016 and closed last fall in preparation for moving to the larger premises.

Esquivel plans to open slowly, beginning with a Monday-Friday schedule and ending with weekend service. Next comes dinner, which is served with full service. For its full bar, Xica will stock a selection of mezcal and tequila brands by women and Latinas like Yola Mezcal. Likewise, plans for wine offerings will focus on women and local winemakers.

“These are people who share our values. That’s huge for us,” said Esquivel.

Packing the new restaurant is a big challenge, but Esquivel hopes to make their new dining space as vibrant as their old Oakland location.

“We just want to make this space lively and inviting. We want you to feel at home,” said Esquivel.

Xica. 1265 Battery Street, Suite 100, San Francisco. Monday-Friday 10:00-14:30 Dinner and weekend hours coming soon. Xicasf.com

Reach Mario Cortez: mario.cortez@sfchronicle.com

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The history of blue jeans is legendary: after buying denim pants from the San Francisco-based retailer Levi Strauss, a tailor named Jacob Davis was inspired to reinforce them with copper rivets in the most vulnerable areas. The two businessmen secured a patent for the blue jeans concept in 1873, and shortly afterwards the trousers were hugged by miners, cowboys, and other working-class men.

But their popularity with women didn’t come until decades later. Levi Strauss & Co. produced its first line of jeans for women in the 1930s, and now TIME reports that what may be the oldest surviving pair of jeans from that period has been repurchased by the company.

Get to know Viola: Our oldest pair of Levi’s® jeans for women https://t.co/Cl9iKRWs05 pic.twitter.com/2cgVenCx6c

– Essence Manzano (@jeanslifehq) August 29, 2017

The high-waisted jeans, which feature a fabric patch, and a belt instead of a belt, were first spotted at an estate sale by a vintage clothing collector. They originally belonged to a teacher named Viola Longacre, who died in 2014 at the age of 100. During her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno), she wore the pants in the Sierra Mountains, where classes were held in the summer.

The pair were likely made before 1934, the year the Lady Levi’s collection was first released. The fact that the Levi Strauss & Co. patch on the back of the waist is made of fabric instead of leather leads company historian Tracey Panek to believe they were released as part of an experimental batch measuring women’s interest in the product should. Although they were a staple of men’s wardrobe at the time, it wasn’t until World War II that jeans became a familiar sight for women.

After purchasing the item of clothing from the clothing collector, Levi Strauss & Co. named it “Viola” after its original owner. They are next to the oldest known men’s jeans, a pair from 1879, in the company archive.

[h/t TIME]

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Jamestown LP, owner of Levi’s Plaza in San Francisco, has announced plans to invest in a clean energy transition program to bring the 930,000-square-foot creative office campus to zero-carbon operations by 2025. Jamestown will run the program as part of its $ 50 million property-wide retrofit.

The announcement comes two years after Jamestown acquired the 9-building property at 1155 Batter St. from developer Gerson Bakar & Associates for $ 920 million. A year ago, the real estate company announced its goal of achieving net-zero carbon business in its portfolio by 2050.

“This ambitious target is synergistic with other municipal and voluntary carbon reduction targets and offers Jamestown the opportunity to create a strategic roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030,” the company stated in its 2020 sustainability report.

The company intends to achieve its net zero target as much as possible through energy efficiency, including in Levi’s Plaza, where the focus will be on eliminating fossil fuel use locally through energy efficiency retrofits. Jamestown will replace boilers with electric heat pumps, generate solar power on site and get 100 percent carbon-free electricity from the grid.

Additional changes that will help Levi’s Plaza meet the net zero target include replacing central gas-powered HVAC systems in each of the nine buildings with electrically powered systems. The company will also install a photovoltaic system on the roof to remove dependence on the electricity grid and a new drainage system to prevent water ingress.

Upon completion of the four-year transition program, Levi’s Plaza will be recognized as the first carbon-neutral property in Jamestown’s portfolio, which spans the US, Europe and Latin America.

More than green-deep

Levi’s Plaza. Image courtesy Jamestown LP

While the move to clean energy is an integral part of the Levi’s Plaza retrofit, the redesign of the property, which first opened in 1981 as the corporate headquarters of Levi Strauss & Co., is worth more than a million dollars.

The campus will be upgraded by creating shared equipment areas that include bike and shower facilities, meeting and event space for the community, and new retail and food and beverage establishments for the community. The retrofit will also modernize the property’s infrastructure and update the landscape to improve the accessibility and functionality of the green space designed by Lawrence.

Levi’s Plaza is still home to the prestigious clothing for which it was originally designed, and also has a host of other tenants including Hult International Business School, Pereira O’Dell advertising agency, the Public Library of Science, BCCI Construction and others.

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