La Cocina was a beloved Tenderloin business. Now, it’s closing
Just over two years ago, La Cocina Marketplace opened at Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street with the hope that immigrant women and their delicious food could finally save one of San Francisco’s most downtrodden corners.
But all the care, cooking and cash proved a recipe that never quite worked — not when battling much bigger forces including the Tenderloin’s decay, high private security costs in a city with a police department asleep at the wheel, and few people in the city’s core amid the shift to remote work.
The marketplace’s food stalls will shutter Sept. 1 and become commercial kitchens closed to the public. Just a fraction of the hulking space — the La Paloma bar and a pop-up lunch area near the front door — will remain open for walk-ins.
The closure is just the latest sad loss for a city that seems to lose another business every day. And sometimes two: On Wednesday San Franciscans learned the 127-year-old Anchor Brewing will shutter hours before I heard about La Cocina’s planned closure while eating a plate of chicken and couscous there for lunch.
And if a business that was widely celebrated — attracting elected officials for lunch and hailed everywhere from Forbes to NBC Nightly News — can’t survive in today’s San Francisco, what can?
Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle
Wafa Bahloul, the Algerian immigrant who made my yummy lunch plate at her stall called Kayma, told me she and the other cooks learned of the closure in a staff meeting Tuesday. But while sad, she said, the news was not a total surprise.
“We worked very hard — every business here, not just me — to bring more people here, to let people know about this amazing place,” she said. “But what happened outside versus inside was totally opposite. The best solution was to just shut the doors.”
She said the sidewalks outside were too dangerous and unpleasant to lure people to dinner as night fell, meaning the cooks were almost entirely reliant on a lunchtime crowd in a city with many workers still toiling from home.
Her husband, who works with her, recently witnessed a shooting outside La Cocina. Drug use, drug dealing, public defecation and urination and trash are common sights on the sidewalks outside La Cocina before it opens and after it shuts. During operating hours, the block is mostly clear — but only because La Cocina was spending $275,000 a year on security it couldn’t afford.
“It’s like just life here,” Bahloul said of the chaos allowed to proliferate in the Tenderloin that wouldn’t be tolerated in other, richer neighborhoods.
Leticia Landa, executive director of La Cocina, said the nonprofit was spending $209,000 every month — on security, custodial services, kitchenware and other costs — while only bringing in $24,000. The marketplace survived as long as it did with financial support from the mayor’s office, foundations and private donors.
The good news is that the nonprofit is confident it can fill its commercial kitchen space in the Tenderloin the same way it has on Folsom Street, where its facility is “bursting at the seams” with cooks who use the space for catering, farmer’s markets and food trucks. It has a lease in the Tenderloin through 2025, and the site, a former post office, is eventually slated to become housing.
Landa said that while the lunchtime crowd was OK, it was never remotely strong enough to support a successful food hall. With as few as 10 people coming for dinner and nighttime events, the endeavor simply didn’t pan out.
“We just never got there,” Landa told me. “It’s hard and sad, but it’s very real.”
Damian Morffet and Ron Haysbert, who work security at La Cocina, put the blame for its failure squarely on a shrugging City Hall and an inconsistent, lackluster police department. They said when they were growing up, drug dealers and people using drugs felt uncomfortable in public — but now they’re given free rein over public sidewalks while families, kids and people just trying to get lunch are made to feel uncomfortable.
“If the police were consistent with their patrols and efforts, people would come out here at night,” Morffet said.
“The cops drive by and look, and they don’t do anything,” Haysbert agreed.
On Tuesday, they said, no one seemed to care when a man dropped his pants and befouled the sidewalk outside La Cocina in a disgusting way, then sauntered off. Despite their efforts to clean the area, it still smelled bad Wednesday, scaring off customers from the marketplace’s parklet, they said.
“This is not the city we grew up in,” Morffet said.
As for Bahloul, she said she and her husband, who have two young children, will try to make a living running their food truck. But she’s worried.
“We’re pushing, pushing to get up the hill, but news like this pulls us down again,” she said. “We’re all in panic mode. What’s next?”
Reach Heather Knight: hknight@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hknightsf
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
