Restaurants’ new bill of fare: dining out on thoroughfares

It could break a San Franciscan’s heart to see what the coronavirus has done to the city’s downtown these days.

It’s almost empty, like a ghost town.

It’s a bit of shock to stand at Powell and Market these days. Only a few months ago it was one of the centers of the city. You could walk most anywhere from there, eat, drink, shop, buy most anything, see most anybody.

So I was dismayed to find so little traffic on Market Street at noontime that I could cross it against the traffic light. A lot of shops and eating places were not only shut but boarded up. The Westfield mall was half empty, and workers wearing masks were cleaning out the flagship Gap store at Powell and Market. The inventory was all gone. What was left was being hauled to two trucks labeled “Junk King” parked on the cable car tracks.

Wow, I thought, junk trucks at noon on the cable car tracks? This city must be dead.

But this is San Francisco, and any obituary for the life of the city is premature. It’s come back to life in a new way — with sidewalk dining.

I’d noticed a boomlet in restaurants serving on the streets in North Beach a few weeks ago, but now the trend has spread around the city, especially in the neighborhoods.

I started with John’s Grill, an old downtown favorite. I’ve been going there for years, but always in the dark, woodpaneled dining room. The shutdown ended that. Now we had lunch outside on Ellis Street, in booths set up in what used to be parking spots.

John’s had a staff of 60 people only a few months ago. “Now we have about 15,” said Johnny Konstin, who is the third generation of the Konstin family to run the place.

“It’s not bad,” he said. “It gives us a chance to keep some of our staff and to keep open,” he said. “Look, we have white tablecloths, we have palm trees on the street. It’s an oasis on Ellis Street.”

Maybe, but it wasn’t exactly crowded the other day, and the noises of the city — traffic and a big construction project across the street — brought the city to your table.

That was fine with Victor Makras, a real estate man and former port commissioner who was having lunch at the next table. “You can feel the neighborhood outside,” he said. “You can see the city.”

I spent the afternoon making an unscientific survey of outdoor dining, driving around, stopping for a beer or a light snack. North Beach is ground zero for food on the street, so I skipped that. I looked on Divisadero, upper Fillmore, outer Sacramento, Castro, Valencia and Mission streets.

Some places are plain, just a table and some chairs on the sidewalk outside, like the one at a grocery store that sells sandwiches on Folsom Street in the Mission or the Royal Cuckoo bar not far away. Some are fancier, especially on Castro Street where one big streetdining spot is painted in the colors of the rainbow flag.

I must have looked at two dozen of these restaurants on the street, and the best looking of them all is at the Front Porch, a New Orleansstyle place on 29th Street, just off Mission.

The Front Porch had just celebrated its 14th anniversary when the shutdown hit. It tried takeout for a while, but that was difficult and demand was unpredictable.

The next move was relocating the restaurant into 29th Street, but the first effort was not only plain but homely — an orange construction barrier flanking tables and chairs. With the help of neighborhood architects and designers, that evolved into an elegant street restaurant: booths enclosed by a bright wall to suggest a New Orleans scene. Atop the wall are three downhome rocking chairs, three orange parasols and a wooden chicken in full crow. “We are known for our fried chicken,” said Josey White, one of the partners.

Still, converting from a conventional restaurant to one out in the street is not easy. The new operation is half the size of the old, and the booths have to be taken down and stored every night.

Costs are up. “We spend $1,000 a month just on cleaning supplies, just to be safe,” White said. And volume is down 40%.

“It’s like having to reinvent the business overnight,” she said.

But that’s what happened. A bit of new style in the old city.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Louis Samuels has dinner in June at Ideale on Grant Avenue in North Beach, where outdoor dining has burgeoned. A tour of various neighborhoods around San Francisco shows that more eating places have taken to the streets to serve customers in a bid to stay in business while the pandemic grinds on.