Bagels, Martinis, And A Bi-Rite: Polk Street's Summer Reset

Three months before Bageletto signed the lease at 2193 Polk, the Peet's between Broadway and Vallejo went dark along with a wave of other Peet's closures across the city. For a stretch of weeks the corner sat papered over, one more empty storefront on a block that had spent the last few years watching chains retreat. Then a Mission bagel shop moved in.

If you live on the hill and walked past that window every morning on your way to the 19 or the 45, you already know the small pleasure of watching a vacancy fill. What is less obvious is that the fill has a pattern this summer, and the pattern is worth naming.

The Peet's-to-Bageletto swap tells the whole story

The single most useful frame for Polk Street in the summer of 2026 is this: the tenants coming in are independents, the tenants coming out are chains, and the independents are being run by people who have already proven themselves somewhere else in San Francisco. That is a different kind of turnover than the one Polk saw during the early 2020s, when small operators were the ones closing.

Look at who is arriving. Bageletto is taking over the former Peet's Coffee spot on Polk between Broadway and Vallejo, and cofounder Kiki Theodorides is a San Francisco native while partner Rich D'Aloia was born in Brooklyn, a heritage the shop distills into its own tagline about San Francisco roots and Mission-made product. Bagels for the Polk cafe will come straight from the 14th Street kitchen in small batches twice a day, with more runs if demand calls for it. That is not a franchise rollout. That is a working bakery agreeing to drive product across town before breakfast.

Two blocks south, the pattern repeats with a different menu. Jupiter Room, a martini-focused cocktail bar, is getting ready to open at 2065 Polk Street, launched by Michelin-starred chef Peter Hemsley and mixologist Trevin Hutchins, targeting summer 2026 in the former Lord Stanley space. Hemsley previously ran the seafood restaurant Aphotic in SoMa, which closed in October 2024 after a year and a half, and he has been open about the reason: low foot traffic near Moscone. The move to Polk is a wager that the opposite is now true a mile north.

Three openings, three different bets

The three arrivals do not read as a trend so much as a triangulation. Each one is betting on a different hour of the day.

Morning: Bageletto at 2193 Polk

The team is aiming for a late-spring debut and plans to run the Polk cafe as a full-service spot with a dining counter, sandwiches and house-cured meats rather than another production-heavy operation. That matters for residents because it means seating, not a to-go window. The menu includes a wide selection of Italian sandwiches such as a muffuletta, roast beef, and a prosciutto cotto breakfast sandwich, all with meats produced in-house.

The neighborhood context is that Russian Hill does not have many dedicated bagel counters, so a full-service cafe funneling in near-fresh product from the Mission could significantly shake up local breakfast and lunch routines. If your current Saturday move is a bagel run to Fillmore or the Marina, you are about to have a closer option.

Midday: Bi-Rite Polk at 2140 Polk

Bi-Rite is not new anymore, but it is still the anchor that reframes the block. The third location took over the former Real Foods Company site and the long-vacant salon next door, and it took a full year of construction to combine and renovate the hundred-year-old building. The scale is the point: Polk Street is the biggest Bi-Rite Market by far, roughly 4,000 square feet of retail and kitchen, 50 percent larger than the Divisadero store and double the 18th Street original, with ceilings soaring above 20 feet into airy rafters and skylights.

For anyone who has lived on the hill long enough to remember Real Foods, that is the tell. A grocer that had been on this corner for decades handed off to a grocer with the ambition to make Polk its headquarters. Polk Street will be the official headquarters for anyone at Bi-Rite who needs a desk, and Sam Mogannam has said he wanted the team together and embedded in a Market. That is a long-term signal about the block, not a short-term one.

Night: Jupiter Room at 2065 Polk

Polk's evening identity has always been closer to a bar corridor than a restaurant row, and Jupiter Room leans into that. The menu will focus on elevated comfort dishes and cocktails with historical nods, referencing 19th-century mixologist Jerry Thomas, and the bar is meant to appeal to residents, industry professionals, and visitors seeking a casual yet inventive cocktail experience.

The Lord Stanley space it inherits was a fine-dining room with a European tasting-menu sensibility. Jupiter Room is a martini bar with burgers. That swap is worth pausing on: an ambitious, prix-fixe-shaped concept is being replaced by something you can drop into after work without a reservation. Whether you liked Lord Stanley or not, the replacement is calibrated for people who live within walking distance rather than for a destination diner making the trip once a quarter.

A working reference for the walk

If you already have a mental map of Polk between Union and Broadway, here is where the new anchors slot in:

The three newcomers cluster inside a five-block stretch. That is not incidental. It is the same stretch where Bi-Rite deliberately tucked its floral display inside instead of on the sidewalk because the block gets so much sun, leaving sidewalk space for cafe tables coming soon, permit pending. Sun exposure, sidewalk width, and cross-street parking on Broadway and Vallejo are why the addresses matter. The corner of Polk and Vallejo is about to have a bagel counter and a full-service grocer within thirty steps of each other.

What this changes about a Russian Hill morning

The practical shifts are small but real.

• Your coffee routine gets a new option that is neither a chain nor a hole-in-the-wall. The Fueling Station at 2436 Polk keeps its place for a quiet cold brew, and owner Lillian Wong, a Russian Hill native who returned to the neighborhood after college, built the cafe around Chaga Matcha and strong cold brew. Bageletto adds a full sit-down morning with sandwiches.
• Your weekend brunch calculus changes. The New Spot on Polk at 2401 Polk runs 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays and until 3 p.m. on weekends, which is a tight window. Bageletto's all-day bagel program gives you a fallback when the weekend line at 2401 is out the door.
• Your evening rhythm gets a new short walk. Jupiter Room sits four blocks from Bi-Rite. Picking up dinner ingredients and stopping for a martini on the way home stops being a two-neighborhood errand.

None of these are dramatic on their own. Taken together, they are the reason the block feels different this year than it did two summers ago. A stretch of Polk that had been defined by what closed is now defined by who is opening, and the openers are people with track records in the Mission, in Jackson Square, and on Divisadero. The hill is pulling in operators who have already succeeded elsewhere in the city.

That is a quieter kind of good news than a ribbon cutting. It is also the more durable kind.

If you own a home on the hill and have been watching the block change with the same casual curiosity, this is the summer to walk the five blocks between Union and Broadway on a Saturday morning and take stock. The Polk Street you use for coffee, groceries, and a nightcap is not the same corridor it was in 2023, and that shift has quiet consequences for how the neighborhood presents itself to anyone visiting, renting, or considering a move in. When you are ready to talk about what that means for your own address, Sasha at Selling San Francisco is a block away on Fillmore and always up for the conversation. Let's Connect.