On a rare Monday night out with girlfriends, we walked into Foreign Cinema at 7:30PM and were genuinely surprised at how full it was. I am fairly certain we would not have been seated without a reservation, which felt unusual for a random Monday night in February. That detail stayed with me.
Curiosity sent me down a small rabbit hole. OpenTable’s “Booked X times today” offered a simple pulse check, and Foreign Cinema was sitting comfortably in the 100-plus range. So were several other long-standing San Francisco institutions.
Kokkari. House of Prime Rib. Wayfare Tavern. Original Joe’s.
These are not new restaurants riding novelty. They are part of the city’s foundation. They have carried San Francisco through multiple economic cycles, technology waves, and reinventions. And here they were, full on a Monday night.
San Francisco is always described through its next chapter — the next funding round, the next neighborhood evolution, the next company to scale. But what makes the current moment feel grounded is where the energy is landing. It is flowing into the institutions.
When the anchors are active, something steadier is happening. Confidence is not just theoretical. It shows up in reservations made days in advance, in dining rooms that feel layered rather than transient, and in places that have defined San Francisco for decades.
The 100-plus marker is not a market analysis. It is simply behavior. And behavior, especially in this city, tends to reveal momentum before headlines do.
San Francisco feels active again. What makes it feel like San Francisco is that the activity is showing up in the places that have always defined it.
