This has always been the case to some degree — at least for the past few decades — but the pandemic exacerbated the issue. Sure, plenty of bars are still open until 2 a.m., but these days, most restaurants close their kitchens by 9 or 10 p.m. at best.

A few places are trying to change that. And they think San Franciscans just might be ready.

Testing the waters

Where some see difficulty in San Francisco’s lack of a late-night scene, others see opportunity. Take Dragon Horse. The new SoMa restaurant, which opened in March, serves sushi and cocktails until 1 a.m. six days a week.

Inside SoMa late-night restaurant Dragon Horse, including its signature house cocktail the Smoked Umami, upper right, chef’s nigiri plate, lower left, and patron Daniel Yang celebrating a birthday, lower right. (Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/Special to SFGATE)
Inside SoMa late-night restaurant Dragon Horse, including its signature house cocktail the Smoked Umami, upper right, chef’s nigiri plate, lower left, and patron Daniel Yang celebrating a birthday, lower right. (Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/Special to SFGATE)

“From what I know, most other restaurants aren’t open that late, past 10 o’clock,” said Dragon Horse owner Derrick Li. “So then we just decided, maybe we can try out the late-night concept and see how people like it.” 

I dropped by Dragon Horse after seeing a friend DJ at 1015 Folsom on a Friday night in May. It wasn’t wildly busy, but with how quiet SoMa is these days, it was a shock to see other groups out for pregames, postgames and even dates. My friends and I got seated around 11:30 p.m. and spent the next hour and a half sipping gimlets and nibbling on spicy tuna rolls beneath paper lanterns in the vibey space.

Dragon Horse also has a private karaoke room, which I didn’t have the pleasure of testing out, but Li says it’s booked almost every weekend with people singing their hearts out until 2 a.m.

Over in North Beach, another new late-night spot is also testing the waters. Petite Lil’s, a temporary cocktail bar that serves duck confit, oysters and steak frites, is holding down the former Washington Square Bar & Grill (aka The Washbag) space until owner Nick Floulis finally opens his full-service restaurant Lillie Coit’s in the fall. 

Petite Lil’s is open until 1 a.m. five days a week, with the tag line “Never early, sometimes later.” That means last call is 1 a.m. — yes, even for food.

Floulis, who also owns Hole in the Wall Coffee, is very passionate about serving food late, having worked in the service industry for decades. His go-to for an after-work meal and glass of wine is the Brazen Head in Cow Hollow, which used to serve food until 1 a.m. but now closes at midnight. 

“But I can’t think of a single other place,” he said. “A lot of places that I love to go to on a regular basis close at 9 or 10. Sometimes I can’t get to a place by 9, personally.”

Petite Lil’s fills that late-night void, but Floulis swears he’s not alone in wanting food service after 9 p.m.

“The verbal demand is there,” he said. “So what I mean by that is people saying, ‘Oh, I am dying to eat, and I’m dying to find a restaurant that serves past 9 or serves past 10.’”

Whether that verbal demand translates into people actually showing up and supporting late-night spots, though, remains to be seen. Petite Lil’s is mostly a word-of-mouth endeavor, with neighbors stumbling across the cheeky red carpet rolled out front (until now, Floulis has avoided press to keep the restaurant from getting busier than he has the staff capacity for). And it’s been open only since February. 

People have indeed been coming out late to eat and drink but mostly on the weekends, according to Floulis. 

Li of Dragon Horse echoed a similar sentiment. 

“It’s been up and down,” he said. “Weekends for sure. Weekdays still need time to pick it up.” 

‘People want to be out’

Over in the lively Mission District, popular pupuseria Panchitas #2 has started to see a rebound in late-night clientele. So much so that in mid-May, manager Jacqueline Vargas brought back sit-down dining after 1 a.m. on the weekends for the first time since before the pandemic. 

“I was doing to-go only after 1 a.m., but I started to see that a lot of people like to sit down to eat after 1 a.m.,” she said. “… I’m starting to see, like, people want to be out. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 o’clock in the morning; they want to sit down and have a pupusa.”

Panchitas #2 returned to its Friday and Saturday late-night hours — until 2:30 a.m. — about a year ago. At first, it was very slow. Now, business is steady, although it’s still not quite as busy as it was before the pandemic, Vargas said. But she thinks there’s potential.

(Patricia Chang/Special to SFGATE)
(Patricia Chang/Special to SFGATE)

“Something is happening,” she said. “You know, there’s a movement coming right now with these late-night people.”

Even in San Francisco’s quieter neighborhoods, the night owls are stirring. As of two months ago, All Star Donuts in the Richmond is now open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays. In March, Ingleside’s 61-year-old drive-in burger joint Beep’s Burgers extended its hours until 2 a.m. 

“We wanted to do it because not a lot of places are open,” said Beep’s owner Samantha Nguyen, who used to close the restaurant at 10 p.m. “… Customers always come rushing at closing, like 9:30, 9:45 to get in line. And then the phones were ringing off the hook. They were always like, ‘You should open later.’”

Still, she found herself surprised by all the support Beep’s received when she actually listened to the restaurant’s customers. At first, it was slow enough that she and her husband alone could handle the late-night hours. But less than a month in, they were slammed. 

“SFPD works 24 hours, and so do the people who have to maintain our roads and buses, so there’s a lot of people who are up past 12 o’clock who need food,” she said. “Which we didn’t know because we don’t actually stay up that late. So to see that there’s demand for it, I was like, wow, I didn’t know that.”

What’s stopping us?

Of course, late-night dining is not a new concept at all for some San Francisco restaurants. Mainstays like 24-hour diner Orphan Andy’s in the Castro have been operating since 1977 — although these days, the diner is open around the clock only three days a week. 

“Business has been pretty good, pretty steady,” said Orphan Andy’s owner Bill Pung. “Our late-night hours Thursday, Friday and Saturday have been good. Pre-pandemic, of course, it was a little bit different, but now it’s getting close to what it used to be.”

Similarly, Polk Gulch’s long-standing cable car-shaped Grubstake Diner keeps the neighborhood fed until 3 or 4 a.m. every night. Owner Jimmy Consos said that lately, his restaurant’s business has been holding steady as well.

“San Francisco is definitely seeing a resurgence in nightlife, but we still have quite a ways to go before we reach the point that is similar to how things were pre-pandemic,” he said.  

Most seem to agree that something is simmering, if not yet boiling, after midnight. Still, the list of businesses willing to meet the rising demand for late-night eats remains quite small. 

“I find that when I talk to my peers, I hate to say they’re not willing to try, but they pretty much very quickly give all the reasons why they would never even try it,” Floulis said. “So I think it’s very difficult.”

When I reached out to the Golden Gate Restaurant Association for its thoughts on what’s stopping San Francisco from having a thriving late-night scene, media representative Amy Cleary told me that staying open late can be difficult for restaurants that are still operating with reduced staff.  

In the aftermath of the pandemic, restaurants are still experiencing a labor shortage, and finding folks willing to work into the wee hours — and find reliable transportation home, with BART closing at midnight — can be a big challenge. 

And if we’re comparing San Francisco with New York, our last call for bars is 2 a.m., while New York’s is 4 a.m., despite repeated attempts to change that over the years. 

But to late-night dining’s passionate advocates, operating a restaurant that serves food after 10 p.m. isn’t impossible. It just takes the proper investment. 

“I’m not in some sort of late-night dining-off with New York City, but at the same time, like, why the hell don’t we have more late-night places?” Floulis said. “I understand the economics and how difficult that is. But you know, you have to have the desire to do it.”

—

Purely anecdotally, I’ve noticed that since the pandemic, my friends and I aren’t staying out as late as we used to. But maybe we’re just older now. Or we’ve gotten so accustomed to the San Francisco habit of going to bed early, we’ve adopted it ourselves. 

But if I knew I could always end my night with fresh sashimi at a debonair spot like Dragon Horse, or prolong a night of bar-hopping in the Mission with pupusas, I might stay out a little later. It certainly beats ordering Taco Bell from DoorDash.