John Marcovici, a lecturer of SF State Speech Communications Studies, held a special ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday at the Boulevard Café, his newly opened restaurant in Daly City, along with the four owners, the Vice Mayor, City Council, Chamber of Commerce of Daly City and other guests.

The Boulevard Café located on Poncetta Dr., opened its door on June 1, after the whole building was completely remodeled from where the Lyon's restaurant used to be. The restaurant is owned by Billy Panoutsopoulos, Peter Foundas, Tommy Alizotis and David Marcovici, John Marcovici’s twin brother. John Marcovici is the general manager of the restaurant.

John Marcovici took a leave of absence this semester to help his brother and partners run the restaurant. After it gets up and running, he hopes to come back to SF State to teach and also stay in the restaurant business. Marcovici graduated from SF State in 1996 with B.A. in Speech Communications and earned his master’s degree on in 2000. He has been teaching for four years in the department.

“I’d like to do both teaching and be in the restaurant,” said Marcovici. “We’ve been doing (the)restaurant business for all our lives, we love it. Preparing food, serving it, showing people hospitality, and getting to know everyone in the restaurant is a fantastic thing,” he said.

Marcovici grew up in the family business as his parents had restaurants in the East Bay.

The Boulevard Café is about 7,000 sq. feet, and has 220 seats, and a lounge in the back of the restaurant. The restaurant features the contemporary American cuisine.

“It’s very broad. Contemporary American cuisine nowdays can have Indian, American, Asian and Mexican influences,” said Vincent Schofield, the executive chef. “We have such eclectic menu in such eclectic city and it gives us maturity to do whatever we want by not limiting ourselves to restrict American cuisine. So for us, contemporary American is everything.”

Daly City officials presented the ceremony to welcome the new business in the city.

“It’s important that the city and the business to work together hand in hand,” said Mario Panoringan, chief executive officer of the Daly City Colma Chamber of Commerce. “We work together to promote our city, that’s Daly City, and to promote its economy, which in turn, makes a better place for us to live.”

John Marcovici said the restaurant wanted to give back to the city as they welcomed the business and decided to help generate funds for the Seton Health Service Foundation for the work that they do. The proceeds from the day and all the sales from the raffle tickets are going to be donated to the foundation.

“We’re very glad to have a partnership with the restaurant,” said Katherine King, executive director of the Seton Health Services Foundation.

The foundation provides the funding to maintain the medical assistance programs of Seton Medical Center. The foundation is the second largest provider of charity care in San Mateo County, according to King.

“Our goal is to become an established restaurant in Daly City and where people can say finally there’s a restaurant where anyone can go, a family-oriented and a bar, because we feel that Daly City was missing something like that,” said David Marcovici.