San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S. F. residents key ingredient to city restaurants’ survival
we are on the last Sunday of the old year, and we can understand how it feels to be on a losing football team, behind by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter with the clock ticking. We just want it to be over.
“At 12: 01 a. m. on Jan. 1 for the first time ever, hindsight will be absolutely 2020,” Amanda Rose, a family friend, posted on Facebook.
Only four more days. And then what?
The virus experts have been warning about a dark winter as the plague sweeps over the world, but it’s the spring and summer that worry me. By then, the gods willing, the vaccine will be working and life can return to normal.
San Franciscans are famously selfabsorbed; we don’t care so much about life in China, or Italy, or other places as we do about our own little city. We think it’s special. And we wonder if the spirit of San Francisco — its elusive soul — can survive the pandemic. It will be different, for sure. But how much will still be the same?
There will be circumstances well beyond our control, but San Franciscans will still have a lot to say about what part of the city lives through the winter and what dies. The pandemic, which made eating out risky, nearly killed the restaurant business. And bars and restaurants are a big part of life in the city. John Briscoe, one of the partners in Sam’s Grill in the Financial District, says there were 4,415 restaurants in San Francisco a year ago — one restaurant for every 200 residents.
Sam’s has been around since 1867. It’s one of the oldest restaurants in the city. But not the oldest: Tadich Grill, on California Street, began operations in 1849. It’s the oldest restaurant in the West. The Cliff House first opened in 1863 and closed in 2020. The Old Clam House, on Bayshore Boulevard, served its first meal in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was president. But that’s nothing: The Seven Mile House, a few miles down the road and just over the county line, started in 1858, the year of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Of the five restaurants, only Sam’s is open for takeout. Except for the Cliff House, the others are in hibernation waiting for better times. “We are taking a break ( until Jan. 20) due to extremely slow business,” the Seven Mile House posted on its website.
It has been a rough road for restaurants. All restaurants were pretty much shut down in the spring. Some gave up entirely, like Little Nepal on Cortland Avenue, which posted a sad little farewell note in its window in April.
Others struggled with takeout and delivery orders. And then, in late summer, sidewalk dining suddenly took off. By late fall, there were hundreds of restaurants in streetside parklets from the Marina to the Mission and beyond. Some of them very elaborate — one in the Castro, the Anchor Oyster Bar, looked like a small house somehow stranded on a public street. At night, it all looked festive. Propane heaters flared up like torches. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow …
But there was no tomorrow. COVID broke loose, and all those newly built parklets are empty again. It’s no secret that a lot of places won’t survive. Which is where San Franciscans come in. They have to act like Doris and Wes Watkins, who describe themselves as Northbeachers. They had spent some of the year out of town and came back to discover the classic Tosca Cafe had reopened for indoor dining, with the full treatment. They were delighted.
Now it’s back to Plan B. “We’ve had takeout from Tosca and many others in North Beach,’’ Doris Watkins wrote. “We care and support.”
Only a few blocks away, the Far East Cafe, one of the mainstays for special occasions in Chinatown — weddings, banquets and new year celebrations — announced it would close on the last day of December. The Far East Cafe, which could seat 800 diners at a time, was 100 years old.
A lot of other small businesses in Chinatown have closed down as well, little places where you can find goods available nowhere else. City places.
Eva Lee of the Chinatown Merchants Association says the city needs to help. She is worried about the year to come. “What do we want our city to look like? Are we going to be a typical suburbia with Targets and big stores left?’’ she asked on KGOTV. “Is that what we want? The fabric of our city is being torn apart right now.”
I suspect San Franciscans can make a difference, by shopping locally, by ordering a takeout dinner even when home cooking is better and less expensive, and by going out when it is safe again.
Otherwise, when this is over, the city could lose a good part of what makes it special. And that’s not something you can order on Amazon.