A chef and former club owner from Inverness Park will turn the video store in Forest Knolls into a takeout bakery and smokehouse, he said this week.
Tony Carracci, who said he signed a lease last month, hopes to start renovations in the coming weeks and open the new business, called Black Star Pig Company, within months. The establishment will sell smoked meats, bread, baked goods and house-made condiments like a blueberry ketchup.
“I can’t wait to start getting up at four in the morning and go to work,” Mr. Carracci, sporting striped pants and a skull ring, said without irony on Monday.
Mr. Carracci, a San Francisco native who has lived around West Marin for about four years, started working in restaurants in the ‘80s after graduating from high school and moving to the Pacific Northwest. After he returned to San Francisco, he opened a restaurant called Cha Cha Cha, which served Cajun cuisine. Then he started running the kitchen at the Cat Club, a nightclub that bills itself as “two dance floors, a smoking alley, go-go cage, state of the art lights, sound, and video projection, along with nightly drink specials.”
He bought the club in 1993, running it for 12 years. He also branched out, in 2000 starting a live music space called The Pound in a remote area of San Francisco. It primarily hosted metal, punk and rock ‘n’ roll groups. “We could get debaucherous,” he said. But The Pound closed in 2008, after the San Francisco Port Authority declined to renew his lease.
He left the nightclub business and refocused on food. He’s done a mix of catering and pop-ups, and worked as a chef at a bar in the city called Upcider, where he also made artisanal condiments.
In recent years, Mr. Carracci taught himself to bake because of his frustration with large loaves just for himself. He bakes much smaller loaves—which his housemates have also savored—with a sourdough starter that’s been going for over two years. (He may encourage you to sniff it).
Interested in starting a new business, he noticed a sign advertising that Video West—the last remaining dedicated video store in West Marin that also sells take-and-bake pizzas—was for sale. The new shop may still offer some videos for rent.
Mr. Carracci, who fills his shelves with cookbooks, is excited for his new project. He said the shop will offer the perfect combo for picnics in West Marin: traditional charcuterie; less common offerings like duck confit and smoked rabbit and goat meat; many kinds of sourdough bread; pastries; a variety of ketchups (which may also include flavors like apple fennel and peach ginger); barbecue sauces; coffee blended with butter, a recent trend; and whatever else he might dream up.
“Get a loaf of bread, some meat and something to wipe on your bread. A full picnic ready to go,” he said.
There will also be discounts for musicians and locals, and trades. “I’m going to do a lot of bartering. If you want to do a trade, just say something,” he said.