"Whatever You Are, Be A Good One."
- Quotation displayed behind the bar at Tosca Cafe.
Obituary
Jeannette Etheredge, legendary proprietor of San Francisco’s Tosca Cafe and beloved North Beach icon, passed away peacefully in Knoxville, Tennessee on June 12, 2026, attended by her family.
Born in Tsingtao (Qingdao), China, to Armenian parents Aram and Armen Baliantz, Jeannette’s early life was shaped by extraordinary resilience. Her mother’s parents fled the Armenian Genocide in 1915, settling in Manchuria before moving to Qingdao, a treaty-port on the northern China coast. During World War II, the family endured internment in a Japanese prison camp for four years, followed by time in a Philippine refugee camp. They eventually immigrated to San Francisco in 1950, when Jeannette was nine years old.
Her mother Armen, renowned in San Francisco for her grace and old-world charm, opened the acclaimed Bali’s Restaurant, which became a gathering spot for performers, artists, writers, and filmmakers. Armen’s deep love of ballet led to close friendships with legends like Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, connections that Jeannette carried forward.
Jeannette became a US citizen on January 10, 1956. She attended Mercy High School and then briefly served in the US State Department as a Russian language interpreter at the United Nations in New York. She returned to San Francisco and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she met her former husband, William Etheredge, a fellow student at the Institute. They married in 1965 and had a son, Devin, in 1968.
In 1980, Jeannette purchased Tosca Cafe, one of San Francisco’s oldest bars (est. 1919), transforming it into a legendary North Beach institution. Under her stewardship of more than three decades, Tosca Cafe became renowned not just for its Prohibition-era ‘house cappuccino’, an espresso-steamed hot chocolate cocktail braced with a shot of brandy, but as a sanctuary of warmth, stories, and unpretentious glamour.
In her famous ‘back room’ at Tosca’s she hosted an eclectic mix of regulars, artists, writers, and celebrities—including Sean Penn, Francis Ford Coppola, Mayor Willie Brown, Hunter S. Thompson, Philip Kaufman, Sam Shepard, Lauren Hutton and many others—while honoring the Tosca Cafe motto: “Whatever you are, be a good one.” She was known for her charisma, wit, storytelling, and ability to make everyone feel at home.
A true San Francisco original and personality, Jeannette presided over Tosca with innate style and dedication until handing over the keys to new owners in 2013. She remained a cherished part of the community, celebrated in oral histories, podcasts, and tributes for her role in preserving North Beach’s vibrant spirit. She served on the boards of The North Beach Citizens Charity, the San Francisco Film Commission and the San Francisco International Film Festival in addition to being a principal fund raiser for St. Mary’s Medical Center Foundation.
She is survived by her nephew, Peter Ridet, famous in his own right as the manager-front man of Tosca Cafe, her nephew and niece Eric and Zoey Baliantz, and her son and daughter-in-law Devin and Deborah Etheredge.
Jeannette Etheredge’s life was one of resilience, hospitality, and indelible presence. She elevated a neighborhood historic bar into a living piece of San Francisco history, where countless memories were made over cappuccinos and conversations. She will be deeply missed, but her legacy endures in the stories shared at Tosca and across the city she loved.
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The camp internees put on a play to celebrate their restored freedom, with many of the camp’s children performing as singing angels. The American soldiers donated the white silk parachutes that they had used to jump into the camp to make angel gowns for the children. Mom recalled that her mother and her aunt stayed up the entire night cutting and sowing the silk, so that the gowns would be ready for the play. My grandmother had told me once that Jeannette was so severely malnourished at this point, after almost four years of camp, that she couldn’t stand very long. But she wanted to be in the play so badly, so they sat her in the front row, dressed in her hand-made, white silk gown.
Almost 81 years later, she told this story to the anesthesia nurses while waiting to go into a surgery here in Knoxville. It was the last of her stories I ever heard her tell.
I would love people to share their stories and photos of her here as well.
Thank you for visiting my mother’s remembrance.
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