SF has no shortage of places to shoot pool — but none has drinks like this

Welcome to Swig City, where we point you toward can’t-miss drinks at the best cocktail bars, restaurants, and upscale neighborhood pool halls in the Bay Area. Cheers!

If you can rack a set of balls, chalk up your cue, then order chashu pork-belly skewers and a Thai basil margarita, you know you’re not in your grandfather’s pool hall.

But that’s exactly what you can do at The Hall, a month-old billiards parlor in the Mission with eight tables, tandoori chicken sandwiches, and lychee mai tais. Opened by a trio of experienced players from diverse backgrounds, it may well be San Francisco’s most upscale pool hall. 

“We always felt there was a gap,” says co-owner Joina Liao, who claims more than 30 years of experience shooting pool. “Traditional pool halls are very serious, but they don’t actually have cocktails or good food.”

Liao, a native of Brazil, is ethnically Thai. Modi Shantharam is Indian American, and Yuko Takahashi is Japanese American. The partners cued up the menu accordingly, with a ponzu crunch salad, corn and edamame fritters, and pãozinho brasilia (steak kebab sandwich) with provolone, arugula, tomatoes, cucumbers, and spicy cilantro-garlic crema. There’s even kulfi, the aromatic, denser-than-ice-cream Indian frozen dessert, in the form of a pop topped with chopped pistachios.

The drinks follow suit. Tasked with “harvesting the three cultures,” as Liao puts it, beverage director Joseph Adams chose to riff on the classics. The old-fashioned employs tamarind and dates, while the whiskey sour incorporates Kikori Japanese whisky and passion fruit, and the Negroni mellows out that typically supercharged cocktail with black-sesame-infused gin.

To give the space new life, the owners worked with the designer of the Tenderloin’s slinky subterranean jazz club Black Cat. The Hall’s interior is similarly sophisticated: a moody gray with potted monsteras for visual contrast. 

Its best feature, Santharam says, is the mezzanine, a wraparound gallery that allows for professional tournament play downstairs as spectators watch from above. “It’s also structured really well for private events upstairs, so we can continue hosting regular traffic and league nights” below, he adds. 

Food and drinks are a passion, but pool is the point. Tables can be booked by the hour, at $15 per person from 5 to 6 p.m. and $25 per person after that. The Hall is coordinating with various Bay Area pool leagues Sundays through Wednesdays, while Thursdays through Saturdays are fully open. Lessons from professionals will soon be available through OpenTable.

The two-story, 8,500-square-foot address has been home to many things over the past two decades: 12 Galaxies, Balançoire, Mission Sports Bar, the Blue Macaw, Arena SF, and others. So many, in fact, that some have taken to calling it a “cursed space.” But many of those earlier incarnations were dance clubs and live-music venues with limited food and beverage offerings. And while the Mission’s constellation of dives has no shortage of pool tables, there isn’t a dedicated pool hall for miles — and the beloved Family Billiards on Geary Boulevard is set to close for redevelopment in less than two years.

It’s hard not to see a parallel to the cult-favorite Alamo Drafthouse across the street, which took over the derelict New Mission Theater a decade ago and successfully elevated the movie-watching experience through good food and drink. The Hall is looking to do the same for billiards. In other words, this is a pool hall with a new spin.