Inside Scoop

Divisadero’s restaurant boom of 2018.

The light bulb-filled red arrow pointing into Che Fico, the hot Italian restaurant that opened in March at 838 Divisadero, was once mostly mustard yellow except in a few rust-covered spots. In 2011, the arrow directed people to Auto City, a neighborhood body shop quietly catering to a steady stream of sputtering dented vehicles.

That same year, a landscape painting of electric blue skies and green trees covered the exterior of Plant’It Earth, an indoor gardening company at 661 Divisadero. In its place now is the ultra-chic Spanish tapas restaurant named Barvale, which opened late last year. The outside artwork has been replaced by stark white paint.

Around that time, a stroll down to the 300 block of Divisadero would have led to KJ Produce Market and its sidewalk stands of fruits and vegetables. Now, floor-to-ceiling windows have replaced those rows of produce, offering unobstructed views into a new Sightglass Coffee shop.

In 2006, when acclaimed Nopa restaurant opened, it quickly reshaped the way people thought of Divisadero’s culinary future, a stark turn from a commercial strip known more for its mechanics and corner stores than trendy dining.

In the last 12 months, at least a dozen notable food businesses have either opened, or have announced plans to open, in this stretch of Divisadero.

All of the new businesses exist on a half-mile stretch of Divisadero between McAllister and Page streets in the NoPa neighborhood. The strip takes about 10 minutes to traverse by foot — and is home to arguably San Francisco’s most prolific new restaurant scene.

Between 2010 and 2015, Divisadero established itself as one of the city’s fastest-growing commercial corridors with a 136 percent increase in sales tax revenue from the hospitality industry. The only neighborhood to outpace it during that period was Hayes Valley at 143 percent, according to data from San Francisco’s Controller’s Office of Budget and Analysis.

And it’s largely new businesses. Of the 16 food destinations between the 300 and 900 blocks of Divisadero, only a handful are more than 12 years old — Club Waziema, Little Star Pizza, Nopa and Eddie’s Cafe, which opened in 1974 and was granted legacy status by San Francisco’s Small Business Commission in 2017. Then there’s Popeyes Chicken, the Louisiana-based chain that has called the corner of Hayes and Divisadero home for three decades.

Yet if harbingers of gentrification are trendy restaurants and coffee shops, then Divisadero is in the throes of conforming to a new populace with disposable income.

In 2016, Souvla opened its second San Francisco outpost and Ju-Ni brought an omakase restaurant to the neighborhood. In summer 2017, both Sightglass Coffee and Namu Stonepot opened. A few months later, the sprawling, 12,000-square-foot Harding Theater nearby became the Emporium, an arcade bar from a Chicago company. Prolific Bay Area restaurateur Adriano Paganini opened his ode to Spanish cuisine — Barvale — around the same time.

Wholesome Bakery brought glutenfree, vegan goods to Divisadero in January, followed one month later by Native Twins coffee, a Mill Valleybased gluten-free handmade granola business.

Che Fico, the upscale Italian restaurant from David Nayfeld and Angela Pinkerton, opened in March. Looking ahead, Pinkerton will open a new restaurant directly downstairs from Che Fico, to be named Theorita. A few doors down, the team behind Ju-Ni is planning a new izakaya restaurant in a former pizzeria at 808 Divisadero.

“I think the growth of restaurants here says more about what’s going on in San Francisco’s dining scene as a whole. People really like to have options and Divisadero provides that,” said Ryan Farr, owner of 4505 Burgers & BBQ, which opened at the corner of Divisadero and Grove in 2014. “Sure, there are more people walking around some nights, but this has always been a residential area.”

Echoing his sentiment was John Dampeer, a San Francisco bar veteran who opened and closed a pair of Noe Valley pubs — Caskhouse and Hamlet — within the last year. Dampeer plans to open Fool’s Errand, a beer-focused hangout this summer on Divisadero in the former home of Mojo Bicycle Cafe.

“This was always an area that I would hang out in so it made sense to come here if I was going to do something next,” Dampeer said. “It’s a great place because it just has that neighborhood, local feel.”

Yet as new restaurants come in, older places that once shaped the neighborhood have been squeezed out. The popular neighborhood grocery store Health Haven lasted two decades before closing at 621 Divisadero in 2015, about two years after Bi-Rite Market, the Mission District grocery store, opened nearby.

“There’s only so many storefronts out here,” said Brenda Buenviaje, who opened Brenda’s Meat & Three on the 900 block of Divisadero in 2014. “What you’re going to start seeing is some turnover at more of these older spots, the mom-andpop shops where, hopefully, the owners were thinking of retiring already.”

Divisadero’s metamorphosis is far from over. New housing developments like those on the 400 and 600 blocks of Divisadero will bring multiple retail spaces and more than 150 rental units.

Still, there remains familiarity. Barbecue lunches and dinners remain popular at 4505 Burger & BBQ, just as they were at its predecessors Da Pitt and Brother-in-Law’s Bar-B-Que. The outdoor seating remains a hangout for locals on most afternoons. Dampeer of Fool’s Errand imagines his business will have a similar atmosphere to his predecessor at Mojo Cafe.

Even at Brenda’s Meat and Three, blocks away from the heartbeat of the new Divisadero, its regulars are people who live within walking distance. Owner Buenviaje said it’s an aspect of her business she doesn’t imagine will change anytime soon.

“A couple of weeks ago, a handyman was struggling to lock the door after he was done doing work at the shop here and someone contacted me on Facebook Messenger to tell me it looked like someone was breaking in,” she said. “Sure, the area is growing, but it’s been growing for the last decade. Somehow it’s kept that neighborhood feel.”

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips