‘Hard to walk away’: SF’s only Hawaiian restaurant and pinball bar to close

It’s game over for San Francisco’s pinball wizards: Outer Orbit, the 7-year-old arcade and bar that doubles as the city’s only “hapa Hawaiian” restaurant, will close around mid-March.

The neon-lit gathering spot for fans of old-school arcade games and lovers of loco moco and garlic noodles has been a linchpin of the Mission-Bernal microhood, where it was not unusual to see plates of chicken wings or slow-cooked “pig melts” delivered to patrons of El Rio, The Knockout, Mothership, and other bars on the nightlife-rich block.

The decision to close was a long time coming, according to owners Christian Gainsley, an Aloha State native, and Elisabeth Kohnke. “It’s been two years when we haven’t made a profit,” Gainsley said.

Even after transitioning to becoming more of a full-service restaurant in 2023, the owners said they struggled. The business “has been successful on every metric except the capitalist one,” Gainsley wrote in an email. The owners are leaving open the option to flip Outer Orbit to a simpler arcade bar with limited food service, or to sell to an employee. Either way, the establishment in its current form will be no longer.

Though the pinball machines were a big draw, Outer Orbit’s uniqueness was its menu. Gainsley says he took cues from Hawaiian restaurants like Ravi Kapur’s Michelin-recognized Liholiho Yacht Club and the shuttered Dogpatch brunch spot ‘Aina, creating dishes found virtually nowhere else in the city. Consider the $17 pig melt, a guava-smoked shoulder brightened with wasabi-lime aioli and pickled shallots, served on Hawaiian sweet buns. “We take a whole steak of pork shoulder and smoke it for 15 hours so that it doesn’t shred or come apart,” Kohnke said. “It’s unique.”

Then there’s the pinball. Between the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda and the arcade and print shop Free Gold Watch in the Haight, the Bay Area has long had a thriving scene. By regularly rotating machines in and out, Gainsley and Kohnke have found some amazing gems, like a fluorescent roller-derby game that doubles as a vintage ad for Mug Root Beer. “I spent a lot of time gussying it up,” Gainsley said. “People get excited because it’s so rare — it definitely wears the ’80s on its sleeve.”

With all these games and only so much garage space to store them in, Gainsley and Kohnke have set their sights on their next project: a larger (and kitchen-free) arcade bar set to open next year in Mid-Market. That neighborhood has fallen on hard times. To Gainsley, this presents an opportunity. “The real estate’s cheap,” he said.