We knew it wouldn’t stay empty for long, and today Grub Street learns that the vacant Criolla Kitchen/Bagdad Café space (2295 Market Street at 16th) will become SliderBar Café, a Palo Alto-based restaurant that’s big on (you guessed it!) sliders. Owner Ashwani Dhawan is expanding north and becoming a mini-chain, moving right into the midst of two other local burger chains, Super Duper and Slider’s, also in the Castro — and, we should mention, across the intersection from the Lookout, which is already serving up some awesome sliders, but we digress.
As you may recall, the southern-inspired Criolla Kitchen appeared to have some troubles in its first year, temporarily closing in December during a mysterious ownership change. After it finally closed for real in March we learned that there had been some kind of ugly lawsuit involving a produce vendor which may have been the final straw.
SliderBar owner Dhawan also owns Mantra, a modern Indian-fusion restaurant in Palo Alto that features things like paneer ravioli and chana chaat poppers.
You can preview the SliderBar menu here, and as you can see it’s fairly simple: ten slider options that can be ordered singly, in threes, or by the dozen, including an American Classic, a lamb patty with feta, a BBQ pulled-pork option, a chicken burger, and two vegetarian options, one of which appears vegan. Also, there’s breakfast — we’re kind of most excited about the breakfast slider options, including one with pepper Jack and chipotle sauce which, curiously, is on a wheat tortilla (not sure how that works, but okay). Also, there are a couple of salads, and they’ll have beer and wine, including beer by the pitcher, assuming they stick with their college-town format.
We’ll update you as we learn more about the timing, but let’s just assume we’re looking at a summer opening here.
Earlier: Lawsuit Closed Criolla Kitchen
Criolla Kitchen Closed for Real This Time; Relaunch Appears Kaput [Updated]
