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Maestro, the restaurant and bakery/cafe from the people behind Burlingame's La Bohème (they actually closed that business to open this one), has shuttered after a brief nine months at Civic Center. It occupied the storied space at 555 Golden Gate Avenue that was once the second home of Stars, and later became Trader Vic's, and the closure seems to have come without much warning — the Facebook account is still active, as is their OpenTable. However, a reader tipped off Tablehopper, and Grub Street has subsequently confirmed on the ground that the place is very dark today when it ought to be open, and no one is answering the phone. Update: Things were seriously messy in the space as of Tuesday, and we have a shot of the note posted outside the restaurant to patrons, suggesting that the restaurant might relocate.

The Mina Group just announced the departure of executive chef Jason Berthold, who's been on board at RN74 since it opened in April 2009. Berthold, apparently, has signed on to a new, unnamed restaurant in the Bay Area set to open in the fall. Replacing him is Adam Sobel, who's both executive chef and partner. Sobel most recently was executive chef at another Mina property, Bourbon Steak in Washington, D.C., and prior to that he was a Vegas chef working at Restaurant Guy Savoy, and at Bradley Ogden's eponymous, Beard Award-winning restaurant at Caesar’s Palace. In today's release Michael Mina says, "We could not be happier about bringing [Sobel] to San Francisco where I have no doubt he’ll make an impressive mark on the culinary landscape." The change-up comes just shy of a year after Michael Bauer dropped RN74 off of his Top 100.

It's been over a year since we first reported that Starbucks is attempting to open their second location (third if you count the Safeway branch) in the Castro, on the triangular lot at Market and Sanchez currently occupied by The Industrialists. Now we learn that yet another coffee chain is looking to enter the fray just up the street: The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Castro Biscuit picks up the news that the Coffee Bean is looking to move in to the former vitamin store at the corner of Noe and Market beneath Fitness S.F. (formerly Gold's Gym). But this is all part of a much bigger development plan that includes the expansion of the gym and the construction of residential units on new floors above it, so this is likely to take a while. Meanwhile, a petition is circulating from local merchants to stop Starbucks from getting that new location, and that project has yet to hit the Planning Commission docket. [Castro Biscuit]

“Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," Michael Pollan famously wrote, but what about more immediate family? We're going to find out, it seems, in the Pollan Family Table, which is being written by the food-policy advocate's mother and three sisters. According to Publishers Marketplace (subscription), the forthcoming cookbook will be chockablock with "Pollan family stories, recipes, cooking techniques, and pantry wisdom for healthy, harmonious meals for every family." While the sagacious, best-selling author — who once told Grub Street all about noshing at Barney Greengrass and ricotta on twelve-grain toast at his mother's apartment — won't be dispensing tips for using sage here himself, he is writing the foreword. Look for the Scribner book in the fall of 2014. [Publishers Marketplace, Earlier]

Is partnering with a cruise line the next step to building a celebrity chef empire? Aboard the uppity Crystal Symphony in July, Nobu Matsuhisa will lead cooking demonstrations, host special Omakase dinners, and schmooze with passengers. A pretty sweet deal, considering he's sailing around Italy. Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian already had plans for a partnership with Norwegian Cruise Line, and now he's sweetening the deal by opening a second restaurant on a Miami-based Norwegian boat. Like Matsuhisa, he'll hop onboard to do cooking demonstrations and hold babies for photographs. Since these cruise lines are two of the most luxurious ones, hopefully these guys will avoid feces and four-hour waits for food. [USAT, Earlier, Miami Herald, Earlier]