They say the children of restaurant families grow up in the business. It’s certainly true for Sancia Scoma.

“I had my first birthday right over there, in the original dining room,” said one of the co-owners of Scoma’s, the historic San Francisco seafood restaurant in Fisherman’s Wharf.

Sancia’s father, Al, and his brother, Joe, opened Scoma’s in 1965 with just six stools and their Sicilian mother’s recipes. Located on Pier 47, behind rows of Jefferson Street shops and restaurants, the waterfront Scoma’s at first catered to fishermen. But within a year, word of its chowder and cioppino spread, and the family had to expand the dining room to meet demand. There would be many more expansions, but none ever compromised the restaurant’s old-school feel, with its retro, boat-inspired bar, classic tablecloths and white-jacketed servers.

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Over the next 60 years, Scoma’s would grow into a massive, 350-seat tourist destination and celebrity haunt — Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Jordan and members of the band U2 have dined there. It’s one of the few Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants that continues to draw locals to the waterfront, some years serving up to 450,000 diners. Since joining Scoma’s in 2014, executive chef Gordon Drysdale, a veteran of institutions like Bix and Fog City Diner, has been the driving force of the kitchen’s local and seasonal approach.

The view of Fisherman's Wharf from Scoma's in San Francisco on April 28, 2025.

Scoma’s servers Simon Torres Jr. and Han Min Zheng pose for a photo near the restaurant’s bar in San Francisco on Dec. 16, 2024.

Scoma’s is also one of the few restaurants in the city with career staffers: 80 of its 130 employees have been there for more than a decade, and dozens have called Scoma’s home for more than 20 or 30 years. Ray Galvin has been a server there for a whopping 33 years because they treat him like family, he said. When it’s an employee’s birthday, everyone celebrates. And, he continued, they’ve always gotten “it” — how to keep a customer for life. 

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“By giving them a great experience, a great product, giving them value on that product, and then in those very-few-hardly-ever times that it goes wrong, they just fix it, they don’t ask why,” he said.

Groups have come from as far as Chicago and Minneapolis to eat in his section. Galvin has waited on an entire shuttle bus from Pleasanton and eased the worries of a father meeting his long-lost daughter for the first time. He rattles off his regulars by name and occupation and can tell you the holidays and special occasions that bring them in. When asked how he keeps track of it all, he explains that it’s simply worth the effort. 

“I don’t take any of it for granted. I feel lucky. I love what I do and I love that I get to work with people like Steve,” he said, referring to Steve Yeong, a friend and Scoma’s bartender seated next to him. Yeong has been at Scoma’s for a remarkable 31 years. He started as a porter just out of college and worked his way up to bar back and eventually bartender. He knew Al Scoma and his drink — a Manhattan — and........

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