When San Francisco chef Azalina Eusope was named a semifinalist in the 2024 James Beard Awards—the so-called Oscars of the food world—it did not translate to lines out the door at her Malaysian restaurant, Azalina’s.
“It hasn’t made any difference” in business, Eusope said, adding that on some nights her team serves only five guests. “I keep telling myself to put your head down and cook the best meal you can possibly cook, and let the universe take care of the rest.”
The problem for Azalina’s isn’t the cooking or the price point or the decor. It’s the location. The restaurant, which opened last July, the successor project to Eusope’s Noe Valley restaurant, Mahila, sits at the southeast corner of Ellis and Leavenworth streets in the Tenderloin. It’s a diverse and densely populated neighborhood that has long struggled with high rates of poverty and homelessness, open drug use and filthy sidewalks. Factor in the self-reinforcing chatter about commercial vacancies downtown and dying malls in nearby Union Square, and it’s hard to overcome the perception that the Tenderloin is, well, a wasteland.
