Here are SF’s saddest restaurant and bar closures of 2024

Although nowhere near as bleak as 2023, this year was an uneven one for San Francisco bars and restaurants. Amid stubbornly high costs and persistent economic doldrums, the city bid farewell to esteemed chef-driven tasting menus and neighborhood mainstays alike. There were bright spots, of course, including the arrivals of Lunette, Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, and Showa Le Gourmet Tonkatsu.

A few moribund places even came back to life, including North Beach Restaurant, Verjus, and The Stud. Next year, we have the return of the Slanted Door to look forward to, and possibly the Cliff House. Plus, we’re still holding out hope that Anchor Brewing’s Potrero Hill facility starts bottling steam beer again — ideally, in its original label. But for now, here’s our rundown of San Francisco’s saddest goodbyes of 2024.

Two years after Mourad Lahlou’s upscale Moroccan restaurant lost its Michelin star, the chef-owner announced he would close it following a “bitter dispute with city officials.” That bone of contention turned out to be $88,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties, and Mourad’s nine-year run at 140 New Montgomery St. ended that very night.

Having relocated once already, Thad Vogler’s celebrated (and nomadic) cocktail bar took up residence in the former Bar at Osito in the Mission, only to close for good within months. The good news? The Bar at Osito reopened in the fall.

“We are coming back as soon as we can,” the owners of Nob Hill’s charming French bistro promised in January following a seismic retrofit. Sadly, it was not to be, and Cocotte was gone for good by September. 

Citing a decline in foot traffic, Bay Area mini-chain Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen announced around Labor Day that it was mothballing its matzoh balls in the Contemporary Jewish Museum. (The chain still has a handful of Bay Area locations.) That may have been prophetic, as the cash-strapped museum announced a one-year closure of its own in November.

After a decade serving burgers and brews on Noriega Street, Sunset Reservoir Brewing’s two-story taproom closed Aug. 31 so owner Hilary Passman could focus on her other business, Devil’s Teeth Baking Co.

During its 18-year run, City Beer Store moved twice, from a subterranean spot in SoMa (now the wine bar Decant) to Mission Street (now Merchant Roots) to Valencia Street, acquiring a significant cult following before shuttering in early fall. Owners Craig and Beth Wathen were vague about the reason, merely saying, “We cannot point to one issue.” 

In spite of declaring a truce with its landlord earlier in the year, Inner Sunset sports bar Blackthorn was felled in September after 31 years, depriving the neighborhood of a spot to watch the Giants and the Niners.

Proprietor Ken Kurita made a point of maintaining affordable prices for coffee and sandwiches during Little Spot’s 22-year run at South Van Ness Avenue and 23rd Street. But the landlord evicted the dog-friendly cafe for unspecified reasons in September. 

Attempting to do for “mochi muffins” what Dominique Ansel did for the cronut, Third Culture Bakery may have overplayed its hand when it sued to trademark the term. A social media backlash brewed, and the once-thriving operation closed its last San Francisco location (in the Inner Sunset) in May.

Twenty-five years after he helped breathe new life into a still-industrial Dogpatch, Tony Hua announced that the original location of Hard Knox Cafe was unable to renew its lease. Fans of Cajun-inflected brunch fare can still go to the Clement Street location, however.

Just across Third Street from Hard Knox, bagel factory Daily Driver closed its original — and final — location the same week in anticipation of a new, unspecified concept. “It will stay a restaurant,” the owners wrote on Instagram, adding, “The amazing team will stay employed.”

Two years after they relocated Cassava to North Beach from the Richmond, partners in life and work Yuka Ioroi and Kristoffer Toliao served their final affordable prix fixe meal in November. The duo isn’t quitting entirely, though, having teased a forthcoming Japanese takeout spot in Jackson Square.

A Mediterranean restaurant that opened to great acclaim in 2019, Noosh endured rough seas after husband-and-wife chefs Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz had a messy split with co-founder John Litz. The couple went on to open the well-received Dalida, and Noosh soldiered on for almost five years before quietly going dark in June as an investor snapped it up along with other Fillmore Street properties. 

Chalk one up to the enduring power of restaurant criticism. When Union Square’s homage to French-controlled 1920s Saigon closed in September, executive chef Geoffrey Deetz cited a negative review five years earlier from which the restaurant never recovered.

What was originally a temporary closure turned permanent on when the 10-year-old Civic Center cocktail bar the Madrigal announced on Instagram that Dec. 28 was the final day of service. The owners plan to turn it into a pop-up and event space.

Corey Lee and Jason Berthold’s Parisian bistro had a 10-year run in Hayes Valley, with dishes including baked brie and whole roasted sea bass consistently propelling it to one best-of list after another. Nevertheless, the duo opted not to renew the lease when it expired this summer.

With some 60 years of experience between them, this duo of French and Spanish restaurants at 44 Belden Place announced they would jointly shutter in October, leaving a big hole in one of downtown’s pedestrian alleys.

Egyptian restaurants are few and far between in the Bay Area, a fact made sadder when Pharaohs called it quits after 12 years on Geary Street in the Tenderloin. So long, lamb shanks over rice.

The casual sibling to David Nayfeld’s Che Fico announced in April that it would be folded into the larger restaurant upstairs. Overall, though, the company is thriving, having since expanded to Menlo Park and opened a pizzeria at Chase Center.

Chef Anya El-Wattar operated the only Russian restaurant in the U.S. with a Michelin recommendation, but the feted borscht and golubtsi weren’t enough to keep it afloat. In March, Birch & Rye vacated its Noe Valley home after two years.

“Berber! Love!” was the catchphrase at Russian Hill’s North African supper club and performance venue, which struggled to find its footing after the pandemic before exiting the stage in March.

A few blocks up Haight from Hobson’s, Milk Bar — once a staple of the city’s standup scene — shuttered abruptly in September. It’s not a total loss, however, as it quickly reopened as an Irish bar called O’Reilly’s.

Having been dark since the early days of the pandemic, Dominique Crenn’s casual Hayes Valley offshoot to the three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn reopened briefly in May ahead of a permanent closure in September. C’est la vie!

Chef Peter Hemsley earned a Michelin star for his ambitious, seafood-centric tasting menus. But like bluefin tuna, the project proved unsustainable in light of the nearby Moscone Center’s ongoing doldrums. Hemsley issued a blistering takedown that cited the “ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole.”

With its time-warp interior and free pours of ouzo, Bayshore Boulevard’s 24-hour doughnut shop boasted that it never closed — until July, when co-owner George Giavris suffered a serious health problem. It remains boarded up.

When the 24-hour diner chain locked the doors to 816 Mission St. for good in August, it left San Francisco without anywhere to get a free birthday Grand Slam. That’s right: no Silver Crest, and no Denny’s.

Endless construction, high costs, and an ugly public fight with landlord the Presidio Trust (which owner Ray Tang compared to Vladimir Putin) brought the Presidio Social Club’s 18 years of brunch on the patio to an ignominious end in March. 

San Francisco’s original spot for offbeat ice cream has long since expanded to several other scoop shops, but when founders Jake Godby and Sean Vahey wistfully announced the original Mission location’s demise in October, it brought San Francisco’s post-Great Recession era of hipster food businesses to a close. 

It was a pioneering burger-and-beer Mission gastropub when it opened on 16th Street in 2007. But this year, The Monk’s Kettle announced it would relocate to Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood via a candid message decrying the rise of delivery apps and a neighborhood populated by rootless tech workers.

Michael Mina commands a fine-dining empire with dozens of properties. But as of April, the refined Greek seafood restaurant Estiatorio Ornos was no longer one of them, leaving only International Smoke and PABU Izakaya as Mina’s projects in San Francisco, where the celebrity chef launched his career.

A nightclub with transgender performers and Cal-Asian fare, Asia SF closed in April after more than 25 years of lip-syncing to Madonna on the Red Dragon Runway at the corner of Howard and Ninth streets in SoMa. 

In spite of its location between Oracle Park and Chase Center, the massive taproom by the Colorado-based brewery closed abruptly in February, making it one of the more high-profile failures in the city’s contracting beer industry.

Though Dylan MacNiven closed the quirky original location of his Castro seafood spot in March, the Woodhouse Fish Co. on Fillmore Street in Lower Pac Heights remains open for fish tacos and lobster rolls.

Baia, one of San Francisco’s most opulent vegan restaurants — in the two-story Hayes Valley space that was the longtime home of Traci des Jardins’ groundbreaking Jardinière — shuttered in March. An Instagram post thanked fans but offered no explanation for the decision.

More than two years after it split from Flour + Water Pizzeria, this corner spot tossed its last dough in December, citing “significant headwinds” on the Valencia Street corridor.

This mid-tier Castro seafood bistro hung it up in March after more than two decades on Market Street. Of note, the restaurant sits at the site where LGBTQ+ activist Cleve Jones and others conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987.