The coronavirus pandemic creates a surprising time for North Beach’s 101-year-old restaurant Tosca Cafe to reemerge.

The San Francisco classic is back open — sort of, as is the case with all restaurants during the coronavirus and shelter in place. Starting Thursday, Tosca is offering family-style meals for takeout plus bottles of wine. Eventually, the restaurant plans to add delivery and to-go cocktails — though Tosca’s famous House Cappuccino likely won’t travel too well.

“We’ve been so excited to share our version of Tosca,” said co-owner Anna Weinberg. “We really want it to feel like the beacon of the neighborhood and this connection point where people from all walks of life share a table.”

Tosca was scheduled to open April 1, but that couldn’t happen as planned with shelter in place. Since the restaurant already had its opening management team hired, the owners opted to open with takeout in an effort to keep everyone on payroll.

It’s a new chapter for the Columbus Avenue restaurant, which abruptly closed last summer after a tumultuous six years with April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman at the helm — Friedman was widely accused of sexual misconduct at their original restaurant, the Spotted Pig in New York, during the height of #MeToo in 2017. Friedman has since agreed to pay 11 former employees $240,000 as part of a settlement.

One month after Tosca’s closure, new owners arrived: San Francisco restaurant veterans Weinberg, the owner of Marlowe and Park Tavern; Nancy Oakes, the chef-owner of Boulevard; and Ken Fulk, the designer behind the Battery in San Francisco, among other venues.

Oakes is the force behind Tosca’s new Italian-leaning menu alongside chef de cuisine Andrew Naffziger, who worked at Tosca before the new owners took over. With shelter in place, the restaurant is offering a rotating family-style meal for two people, costing $24 per person via Tock.

“This isn’t tweezer food or anything. It’s super comforting and very simple,” Weinberg said.

The version on Thursday, for example, features a Little Gem Caesar salad, meatballs with red sauce and fresh rigatoni, and butterscotch budino for dessert. A vegetarian version swaps out the meatballs and red sauce for wild greens and walnut pesto, plus a side of grilled beets.

Working to open Tosca in some fashion beats waiting around for the shelter-in-place order to lift, Weinberg said.

“It’s a desire to connect with the community,” she said. “This is giving us something to do and something to collaborate on.”

Tosca Cafe. 242 Columbus Ave., San Francisco. Order takeout at https://www.exploretock.com/toscacafe/

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker