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Danielle Echeverria. But the loss of Piperade also left a hole in one of the oldest surviving Basque communities in the American West. Basques, who come from a region in the Pyrenees Mountains in northern Spain and part of southern France with a unique culture and language, once claimed a stretch of San Francisco’s North Beach, with Basque restaurants and hotels lining Broadway. But Piperade was the last remaining Basque restaurant in the city.

“It’s really sad that it’s gone,” said Nancy Zubiri, who grew up in the Bay Area and now writes about the Basque American community.

Hirigoyen agreed. “The older generation in San Francisco really grew up in Basque restaurants. … We had a really rich history, and I wanted to keep that going with the restaurant,” he said. 

The problem, which has become common, is one of succession. “Unfortunately, I had nobody to take over,” Hirigoyen said. 

While the city’s first Basque hotel was built in the 1860s, according to Zubiri, who wrote a book about the history of Basque communities throughout the U.S., the 1950s through ’70s were the heyday for the Basque community in San Francisco. At that time, several Basque boardinghouses or hotels where new Basque immigrants would stay, were in operation on and around Broadway, between Chinatown and Little Italy in North Beach — an area once dubbed “Basquetown” by the Chronicle.

“We had a bunch of hotels down there,” said Leon Sorhondo, whose parents operated a boardinghouse on Broadway called the Pyrenees, where he helped out when he wasn’t at school.

The Basque boardinghouses had restaurants inside, many of which opened to the public and served multicourse family-style meals, consisting of wine and cheese, soup, salad, pickled beef tongue, a meat like roast lamb, steak or chicken, and spaghetti.

Zubiri remembers running around Broadway as a child, watching people play pelota, a Basque handball game similar to jai alai, at the Helen Wills Playground at Broadway and Larkin, or going to the restaurant in the Basque Hotel.

“We were so much a part of San Francisco,” Zubiri said.

The boardinghouse restaurants were popular with non-Basque San Franciscans as well. Francisco and Antoinette Oroz operated the Basque Hotel on Romolo Place, a steep North Beach side street, from 1978 to 1985, after buying it from Antoinette’s sister. They said that most of their customers were “Americans” who liked the restaurant for its plentiful, hearty and affordable meals — especially students and families. 

“The price for dinner was $8,” Francisco said. “Can you believe it?”

“We never did any advertising, but it was a line outside to get in,” Antoinette added. At one point, she said, they had to charge customers before they came into the restaurant because it was so busy inside that people could easily leave without paying for their meal.

There were other Basque restaurants and cafes throughout the city in the 1970s as well, as many immigrants like the Orozes made a living in restaurant work. Many of the restaurants skewed more French than Basque, however, serving traditional French dishes like duck a l’orange or moules frites rather than Basque dishes like lamb stew or poulet basquaise (chicken cooked with tomatoes, peppers, onions and the Basque paprika-like spice piment d’Espelette).

But through the 1980s and ’90s, a shift began. Basque immigration slowed dramatically after the 1960s, as national immigration policies changed and conditions improved in the Basque Country. The boarding houses then became less and less necessary for the community. Basque hotels and their restaurants began to shutter: in 1996, the Chronicle reported that only one restaurant, Des Alpes, was left, in an article headlined “Basque Traditions Are Fading Away in S.F.”

“Little by little, things changed,” said Sorhondo, whose parents’ hotel closed in 2000. And few from the next generation, including himself, wanted to take over the family business running the restaurant or hotel. 

On top of that, the building against which Basques would play pelota was demolished. So the Basque community funded and built the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco in 1982 to have a place to continue playing. To financially support the center, the founders decided to add a restaurant inside, and it soon became a central hub for the community. 

The city’s boardinghouses consequently became less of a destination, the Orozes said.

“After the Basque Center came, all the Basque people disappeared,” Francisco said, outside of private parties for events like baptisms.

But in the late ’90s, a more refined Basque cuisine rose in popularity, as the Basque Country became known as an international culinary destination. That wave brought Hirigoyen, a Basque Country native, who started by putting Basque dishes on his menu at his French restaurant Fringale, before opening Piperade as a fully Basque restaurant in 2002.

Sorhondo, who is friends with Hirigoyen, said the new restaurant was exciting for the Bay Area Basque community.

“It was great because all of the other restaurants were closing down,” Sorhondo said, while Hirigoyen brought an elevated Basque food that the city hadn’t seen much of before. “He was a very positive influence.”

Other Basque restaurants in the vein of Piperade have come and gone in the years since, including Aatxe, by Flour and Water’s Ryan Pollnow, and Illuna Basque, by Basque Country native Mattin Noblia. In 2012, the Chronicle described another “makeshift Basque corridor” of restaurants: Bask and Bocadillos on Montgomery Street, Txoko on Broadway and Piperade on Battery Street. All have since closed, including Bask earlier this year.

Basque influence is still present in the city: Spanish restaurants offer Basque small bites called pintxos, like ham or cod croquettes, nutty, salty Basque sheep’s milk cheese, or gildas, which consist of a pickled green pepper, an olive and an anchovy skewered together on a toothpick. 15 Romolo, the bar that operates in the old Basque Hotel, features several homages to its past on its menu and frequently has Basque cider, which is dry and funky, and txakoli, a light, almost fizzy Basque white wine.

But Piperade was special because it was completely Basque. Its menu featured traditional Basque dishes, like its namesake piperade, a slow cooked tomato and pepper stew; its wine list featured several from the Basque Country; Basque decor, like a curved cross called a lauburu, a symbol of the Basque culture, adorned the walls. Basque families in the Bay Area celebrated special occasions like birthdays, graduations and holidays at the restaurant. In its final months, Hirigoyen said the restaurant was booked with people from the Basque community coming for one last meal.

With its closure, there aren’t any places within the city that fill that void, San Francisco Basques said.

“Besides the (Basque Cultural) Center, there really is no ‘go-to’ anymore,” said Anna Marie Etcheverria, chair of the board of directors of the San Francisco-based Basque Educational Organization.

The Orozes said that, while they used to love to come to the city from where they live in San Rafael, they now rarely do. 

“We don’t even know where to go anymore,” Antoinette said. “Everything’s changed.”

Zubiri said she thinks a “confluence of factors” could be to blame for the lack of new Basque restaurants in the city. The Basque community in the Bay Area has spread out into the suburbs; there are few new Basque chefs like Hirigoyen coming to the city; and the pandemic made the business difficult. 

Still, the Basque Cultural Center, a large, white building with its restaurant in the front and pelota court and banquet hall in the back, has been integral to the Bay Area’s Basque community.

The Orozes, for example, make the hour-long trek down to South San Francisco frequently, and they’re grateful that they, their children and grandchildren all still have somewhere they can gather over a Basque meal, complete with soup, salad and two entrees like braised lamb cheeks followed by roasted New York steak, as they once did on Broadway.

“When you go to the Center, you know you’re going to see your friends,” Antoinette said.

Hirigoyen said he sees more people experimenting with Basque techniques and dishes in different kinds of restaurants, as chefs from around the world visit and study in the Basque Country. He cited Animo, a Korean-Basque restaurant in Sonoma (which is currently closed but plans to relocate) and the craze for Basque cheesecake, which has no crust and is burnt to caramelize its exterior. He thinks another Basque restaurant could succeed in the city.

“It would be great,” he said. “But I don’t see anybody that I know wanting to do that.”

Reach Danielle Echeverria: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @DanielleEchev