Il Cane Rosso (the red dog) opened in July of 2009. We are located in the historic Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco. Although our menu is inspired by Italy, il Cane Rosso’s food is purely local in origin. The menu takes full advantage of the Bay Area’s fantastic local purveyors, including Prather Ranch, Mary’s Organic Poultry and Marin Sun Farms for pasture-raised meat and poultry; Star Route, Dirty Girl, Mariquita and County Line farms for produce; and Bellwether and Clover for dairy and cheese.
While the restaurant first debuted as a simple sandwich shop and rotisserie, today we serve three meals daily. We host private events on and off-site to serve corporate and private clients’ catering needs. We also regularly participate in local events such as the San Francisco Street Food Festival, CUESA’s (the Center for Urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture) annual Sunday Supper, and pop-up dinners at local venues.
While il Cane Rosso continues to expand, our core philosophy of creating delicious food using the best local ingredients has never wavered.
A close-knit team, every Il Cane Rosso employee is committed to sharing fresh, delicious & innovative offerings.
Lauren Kiino – Executive Chef/Owner
Chef Lauren Kiino was born in California and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan where her mom gave Kiino and her sister an early appreciation of eating and cooking. After attending Amherst College and graduating in 1994 with a BA in geology, Kiino worked in Chicago and Boston as an environmental geologist, but she dreamed of cooking for a living. She received her first culinary break in 1997, when she went to work at Chris Schlesinger’s East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass., first as an unpaid “volunteer,” and eventually as a paid line cook. Once she started cooking, she knew she had found her true calling.
Kiino relocated to San Francisco in 1998, where she quickly found a job at LuLu. In 1999, she moved to Delfina, where, under chef Craig Stoll’s guidance, she fell in love with Italian cuisine. She worked her way up to chef de cuisine and added a rustic and market-driven sensibility to her food. While at Delfina, Kiino staged at Da Delfina and Da Caino, both Michelin-starred restaurants in Tuscany. After leaving Delfina at the end of 2007, she staged at Boulette’s Larder, Rubicon, Coi and the French Laundry. Working at these restaurants, with their diverse and distinctive approaches to food, helped Kiino further develop her technique and personal cooking style.
In July of 2009, Kiino opened Cane Rosso, a casual Italian-inspired rotisserie and sandwich shop in San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building. Her cooking embodies the Northern California culinary style. She has a strong affinity for cooking over a live fire, which she first came to appreciate at the East Coast Grill. Her food allows the clean, bright flavors of the ingredients to shine and is informed by European and American culinary traditions.
