After 30 years of serving duck-leg confit and onion soup with bubbling gruyère, Mathilde French Bistro in SoMa will close Dec. 31, according to Lina Yew, who owns the restaurant with her husband.
As the lights go dark at Mathilde, however, Yew’s other French restaurant, L’Ardoise in Duboce Triangle, will serve a glitzy New Year’s Eve menu of caviar cream puffs and filet mignon.
“L’Ardoise is still doing great,” she said. As for Mathilde’s, well, it was the right time: “I had kept on feeling like I didn’t want to be a quitter, but then when I hit 30 years, I decided, I think it’s OK for me to stop.”
Mathilde’s closure marks the end of an era at 315 Fifth St., but fans of its authentic, homey French cuisine can take solace in L’Ardoise. The menus — heavy with classics like creamy mushroom risotto and escargot swimming in garlic butter sauce — are similar.
It’s the settings that differ: The contrasts are vast between Duboce’s “little village” atmosphere and the gritty downtown expanse of SoMa, which has experienced plenty of booms and busts.
Yew describes the 16-year-old L’Ardoise as an “itty-bitty Parisian bistro” you’d discover as you wander down an alley, versus the “more spread out” Mathilde, which has a twinkle-lit patio. (L’Ardoise, by the way, is French for “chalkboard,” a reference to the handwritten specials menu.)
Both venues have loyal regulars, but Yew admits that Mathilde’s locale is rougher around the edges.
“The neighborhood is not making it easy,” she said. Many SoMa businesses fled amid the pandemic, and there are fewer people around. These days, some older Mathilde patrons don’t feel safe walking to their cars after finishing their coq au vin, so waiters routinely escort them, she added.
“People don’t want to go to that neighborhood as much as they want to go into a more walking-friendly neighborhood,” like Duboce, she said.
The disparity plays out in the data. SoMa’s sales tax revenue plunged 49% between 2019 and 2024, while the ZIP Code that includes Duboce fell about 4% over the same period. In Duboce, condos are selling for above the list price, according to data from real estate brokerage Vanguard, while the opposite is true in SoMa.
While Mathilde’s business had remained relatively steady, it began dropping late last year into 2024, Yew said, and it’s a more challenging environment than L’Ardoise overall. Mathilde is bigger, so its monthly rent is much higher, but revenues are typically lower.
“L’Ardoise sales are almost double, for being half the size,” she said.
When Mathilde’s lease ended early in the pandemic, she opted not to renew a long-term contract to see if the area would bounce back. Falling sales and the achievement of an even 30 years convinced her it was the right time to shut down.
Since opening the space in 1994 under the name Le Charm, Lew has seen SoMa transform several times over, from the dot-com boom to a hub for alternative artists to another tech cycle and the current sparseness.
She remembers scolding diners in the late 2000s for keeping their shiny, new iPhones on the table during dinner: “You didn’t even have a place to put the plate!” she said with a laugh. “They just wanted to show off.”
She also remembers cancelling lunch service when those techies started working downtown or eating at office cafeteries in the early 2010s.
“It’s always dying down and coming back up: South of Market is like a phoenix, with its burn and rebirth,” Yew said. “It’s not a bad neighborhood; it’s not a great neighborhood. But it’s always an interesting neighborhood.”
In Duboce, meanwhile, the streets are crowded with young residents and families. She expects L’Ardoise to last in the neighborhood at least as long as Mathilde did in SoMa.
“I don’t want to sound like getting to 30 is easy and being pompous about it,” she said. “But that’s definitely what we aim for.”
She and her husband Thierry Clement are not ruling out opening another eatery and have already received messages about spaces available in other neighborhoods. But for now, she’s enjoying Mathilde’s final days, chatting with regulars, and thanking everyone who helped it thrive over the years.
“I’m very, very grateful to the community,” she said. “I’m sad, but I’m also relieved to be able to take a break.”