Join us for Tag Along, where local writers, artists, food authorities, and celebrities shine a spotlight on the best food and drinks in their favorite Bay Area neighborhoods.

Colin Winnette is a long-haired, wide-smiling, game-writing bohemian living in San Francisco. Hailing from Denton, Texas, he’s worked as a bookseller on Haight Street, a copywriter for hospitals, and a ticket-taker at a movie theater. He’s also the author of seven books, most recently Users from Soft Skull Press, which earned a glowing review in the New York Times in May and another in The Nation in August. The book is about the perils and potentials of virtual reality and was written at a handful of bars and cafes in the Mission District. “San Francisco’s got a lot of heart,” Winnette says. “It’s a beautiful city to work in with deep literary roots.”

Winnette finished a book tour in spring 2023 and, on the day we meet to traipse through the Mission, he’s en route to Dog Eared Books for a print copy of the paper. He’s glad that, after emerging from COVID lockdowns, people still felt like coming out to say hello. He’s doubly thankful for the sleeper, unsung hangouts in the Mission that allowed his book to come to fruition. Join Eater SF as we accompany Winnette on a typical day of writing, caffeinating, drinking, and eating around the Mission District.

CoffeeShop

3139 Mission Street, San Francisco

Finding CoffeeShop on Mission Street is sort of like doing a word search puzzle; it’s the kind of hidden spot one could miss by blinking. The soy latte — and maybe an everything croissant on a peckish day — gets Winnette started each day. The shop itself, though, is well-known for its Sherpa, a rendition of the Bulletproof coffee trend. The joint, which has been in business for more than a decade, also freezes its coffee into cold brew ice cubes and makes its pastries in-house.

Winnette lived around the corner from this tiny storefront while he wrote Users, taking his soy latte to the sidewalk where the cafe stocks a few literal stumps. They work as tables, or in the writer’s case, a desk, as the 49 bus flies by. There are no plugs, no “work here” culture, as Winnette describes it. He gets through his coffee, works maybe an hour or so, takes stabs at early sentences, then heads on to the next destination. “I’m better when I indulge my restlessness,” Winnette says. “Rather than saying ‘Sit! Work!’”

Atlas Cafe

3049 20th Street, San Francisco

The sunny and expansive patio at this 20th Street restaurant plays host to a big daytime crowd. Winnette became a regular thanks to rock climbing sessions at Mission Cliffs a couple of blocks away; he’d come here for a smoked trout bagel, served on bread once the bagels sell out in the afternoon. The shop serves Grand Coffee from Mission Street, and the tangy espresso and foamy cappuccinos are both affordable and delectable. It’s the laid-back nature that allows Winnette to enter the writing space. “These are uninterrupted places,” Winnette says.

The bagel or a sandwich on rosemary bread, doesn’t hurt, either. He opts for a window seat, anywhere with a plug to recoup lost battery spent at CoffeeShop. But, just like that micro cafe, Winnette doesn’t stay here longer than a few hours before moving on. He attributes his frenetic approach to an undergrad interdisciplinary arts degree, one that had students in and out of various studios as a form of inspiration. The noise from the chatter of cafe-goers is still as important as the espresso and food. “It’s chaotic enough to become like the ocean lapping on the shore,” Winnette says. “Hypnotic.”

Phone Booth

1398 South Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco

This lowkey Mission Street bar, a few blocks from decidedly not lowkey Tacos Patron, opens at 2 p.m. Or, that’s what you’d think from its posted hours — really it opens whenever it opens. Walking over isn’t too strenuous, though Winnette might hop on the 14 or 49 Muni lines to get a bit closer. The move here is a gin and tonic or a beer — nothing esoteric, just to get the wheels turning in a new direction. “This is me changing drugs,” Winnette says. “From caffeine to alcohol.”

To some, this decades-old bar is the perfect dive. Its pool tables and dimly-lit ambiance let Winnette unwind a bit, though he stays focused on the writing. He and an old pal, a high school teacher who lives a double life as a Jeopardy! whiz, would sip whiskey and read each other old poetry for fun. “There’s a great writing community in San Francisco,” Winnette says. “Even though the city has priced out a lot of great artists.”

Front Porch and Rock Bar

65 29th Street, San Francisco and 80 29th Street, San Francisco

A shot of whiskey with a pony boy Miller High Life is how the author ends the day. Rock Bar is one of those haunts that serves familiar faces day in and day out — and has now celebrated the birthdays of four neighborhood dogs over the years — on an otherwise unremarkable corner. Across the street, before hitting the pub, Winnette might grab dinner to take to the bar. Southern restaurant and bar Front Porch is happy to oblige; Winnette loves the veggie burger while his wife opts for the beignets, and, for company, they order a pitcher of signature cocktail Porch Swing.

The fried okra also goes hard, and Winnette says the grits — best with a fried egg on top — might be the finest in the city alongside the fare at Brenda’s. These are the meals that keep him ready for a swim with the Dolphin Club or pondering artificial intelligence civil rights (something Winnette thinks is just over the horizon). As he winds down at Front Porch or Rock Bar, he reads the paper, trying to be a human being after being a writer, he says. Sometimes his books’ reviews appear in those papers. But, most of the time, he’s just drinking a pickle back and eating fried okra after sifting through the white noise of San Francisco for eight hours or so. The author says these bars and restaurants remind him of Denton, in that they’re ubiquitous and unpretentious. “They have a thread of home,” Winnette says.

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The post Tour San Francisco Writer Colin Winnette’s Favourite Mission District Cafes and Bars appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Once upon a time, the all-day café was the little black dress of the restaurant world: your meeting place for coffee and pastries on the commute, a place to meet friends for a quick breakfast, and an easy option for a casual business lunch. It was a convenient destination for happy hour with co-workers and a no-frills dinner choice for those days when you just didn’t feel like cooking.

Today, the all-day café is more of a rarity — less of a wardrobe staple and more of a vintage piece that you only pull out when you find it at the back of your closet. Castro’s Cafe Flore closed in early 2020, ending nearly five decades of all-day operations, and The Grove, a local chain of all-day restaurants, shrank from four locations to one last fall. Most recently, the Reverie Cafe gave up in February, ending its 21-year run of serving coffee by day and beer and wine by night in the Cole Valley neighborhood. As with many current trends in the restaurant industry, the closure could be attributed to the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

But now, alongside the return of restaurants more broadly, a new generation of all-day dining options is emerging in San Francisco — and they’re not coming from first-time restaurateurs, but from the chefs and owners behind successful high-end restaurants. From Automat in NoPa, where chef Matt Kirk has teamed up with David Barzelay, chef and owner of Lazy Bear, to Michelin-starred Sato Omakase’s Dento Union and Dento Coffee & Wine on Folsom by restaurateur Min Choe, could All-day dining options coming soon are trending again.

Over in Lower Pacific Heights, chef Matt Accarrino plans to open the door to his casual cafe Mattina on April 1st. The restaurant’s name translates to “tomorrow” but will serve the neighborhood from sunrise to sunset. Coffee and freshly baked pastries are available, as well as a full menu for lunch and dinner, featuring wood-fired Spiedini and a carefully selected wine list. For Accarrino, who has owned and operated Italian restaurant SPQR just around the corner since 2009, the move into casual dining comes from a combination of wanting to satisfy his personal passions and expanding his ability to connect with the neighborhood serve.

The idea came up during the pandemic. “I’m a cyclist, and everyone knows that stopping for a cup of coffee is part of the culture,” says Accarrino. “So, partly out of selfish motivation, I opened my own coffee shop.” Accarrino’s Coffee and Donuts ran a weekend pop-up on SPQR’s doorstep. When Mattina opens, he’ll be frying the donuts over the weekend, but the new restaurant will give him a broader platform to feed the neighborhood’s hunger for a quick and casual daytime meal.

From a business standpoint, Accarrino says Mattina allows him to connect with more clients. While SPQR only serves a full tasting menu five nights a week, Mattina is starting out with three meals a day, five days a week. The chef understands that even guests who love SPQR may not feel comfortable visiting the restaurant every week. He hopes Mattina will offer a more accessible option to these fans.

Dento Coffee & Wine at SoMa Nathan Choi

Choe, the chef and restaurant owner behind Dento Union and Dento Coffee & Wine in SoMa, shares this sentiment. At the former, coffee and pastries are on the menu of the day. But in the evenings, guests can order cold-smoked tuna in truffle ponzu and fatty tuna with aged soy and caviar. While these dishes are simpler than the sushi and sashimi served at his high-end restaurant, Sato Omakase, they use the same high-quality ingredients. “I wanted to create a place that you could walk into without having to worry so much about the budget,” says Choe. “And later, if you want the full experience, you can always come to my restaurant and have the omakase experience. But maybe that’s a bit too much in everyday life.”

Dento Coffee & Wine also serves the four craft beers that Choe brews with legendary Bay Area brewer Dave McLean specifically for its restaurants. In part, Choe says he wanted to open Dento to have a place to showcase the project, which he has far bigger plans for than just the current brew room in the basement. Later, Choe plans to open a second production facility, expand the line to eight beers, and distribute to not only his own restaurants and bars, but other high-end Japanese and Korean restaurants across the city. In this sense, Dento represents only part of the entrepreneur’s broader vision.

Barzelay, who opened his two-Michelin-star Lazy Bear restaurant in 2009, also sees value in expanding his list of restaurants and bars, which now includes Automat and cocktail bar, True Laurel. Efficiency at the operational level comes from the ability to centralize tasks such as accounting, marketing and human resources. With a single location, all of this work typically falls to third parties, but with multiple restaurants and bars under one roof, Barzelay can say he can bring things in-house.

Of course, it wasn’t operational efficiency that inspired Automat. “A big part of that was the lack of full-time concepts,” says Barzelay. “The lack of anything solid for breakfast or even lunch. Also Matt [Kirk]The food is really great.” Additionally, both Barzelay and Kirk have young families and they longed for a place where they could get a quality meal in a kid-friendly space.

The breakfast roll in the machine. automatic

But the chef says the issues that have always made running an all-day restaurant a challenge have not gone away. If anything, they’re more intimidating than ever. Inflation continues to drive up ingredient prices, and Barzelay points out that even when a restaurant offers a more casual experience, there’s likely still a lot of work going into the food. “No one realizes that every item on Automat’s menu is as labor-intensive as an item on Lazy Bear’s menu,” he says. “Those sandwiches probably cost a lot more than you think.” Staffing, a perennial issue for the restaurant industry, also becomes more complicated when managers and servers are scheduled for a restaurant that’s open nearly 12 hours a day, six days a week.

These days, Barzelay says it’s difficult to get people out of the house just for weekday meals. While diners still seem ready to roll into Lazy Bear for a special night on the town, the chef says he’s not confident the appetite for all-day concepts will be enough for restaurants to make the comeback he wants hoped for in the post -pandemic world. “I think the jury’s still out,” he says.

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The post A few of San Francisco’s Finest Cooks Are Opening New All-Day Eating places and Cafes appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.