On Divisadero, This Fall Is About Who Comes Back

Around 2:30 a.m. on June 29, a Divisadero bartender heading home after a shift saw smoke around The Mill. Another caller reported an orange glow in a window. Firefighters arrived within three minutes, found the fire at the back of the café, and kept it from reaching the residential and commercial buildings next door. Their response took minutes. The recovery has now run more than three months, and on October 4 there is still no reopening date.

That gap explains the corridor this autumn. It took one night to close The Mill. When it reopens will be settled by insurance adjusters, contractors and lease terms, and those timelines vary widely from one storefront to the next. In its September 29 report, Gazetteer SF put it plainly: "Fires, in many ways, have defined the ebb and flow of Divisadero Street in recent years." The useful question this fall is less about what is new on the street and more about how long each dark storefront has been waiting.

Five Storefronts, Five Clocks

These are the fire-affected storefronts as of early October 2026, listed by how long each has been, or was, closed.

The fires were not connected. A San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson, Lt. Mariano Elias, said so directly after the June incidents and pointed to grease building up in cooking equipment as a common cause. "I wouldn't suggest that it's a trend or that people need to worry," he told the Chronicle. So the pattern lies in what happens after each fire. On the same block, closures have run from a few hours to several years.

The Fast Return on the 800 Block

The June 11 fire reached the roof area around Che Fico at 838 Divisadero, on the tightly built block near Alamo Square. A nearby family-owned natural foods grocery and a boba shop were evacuated and temporarily closed while firefighters worked from the roof. SFist reported that Foghorn Taproom was open again that same evening.

Che Fico needed longer. Right after the fire, chef-owner David Nayfeld posted on Instagram that running a restaurant can be "soul-crushing" at times and that he did not know when it would reopen. By mid-August it was hiring for two positions. On October 3 the date was set.

"Exciting news! Che Fico will be reopening its doors, October 18th. We want to see you all there." David Nayfeld, on Instagram

Reservations are open now. From June 11 to October 18 is 129 days. For a California-Italian restaurant on a block where the fire spread across the roof area, that is a quick turnaround compared with the rest of the table.

The Brick Building at 736

The Mill sits in a single-story brick building constructed in 1929. Weeks after the fire, the Chronicle found the doors locked, the windows covered and a sign thanking customers for their support. The smell of smoke was still there. The paper spoke with a customer who said she checked on the café.

Community support has been large. The GoFundMe for the combined Josey Baker Bread and Four Barrel Coffee space has raised more than $100,000. Even so, Josey Baker said in mid-August that restoration had stalled while the insurance claim was worked out, and that cleanup would start in the following weeks. That is the most recent public update. No reopening date has been announced.

The bread is still available while you wait. Josey Baker Bread is baking for now at the newly opened Saltwater Bake Shop in SoMa, and its loaves are still sold at Bi-Rite Market, Rainbow Grocery, Berkeley Bowl, Mollie Stone's and Falletti Foods. If you want a Josey Baker loaf before The Mill reopens, Falletti Foods is the closest of those to the corridor.

Four Years at Divisadero and McAllister

The Oasis Cafe corner shows how long these closures can last. Taddesse Haile opened his NoPa business in 2007, first as a grocery and later as an Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurant and café. In 2022 a three-alarm fire that started in a third-floor apartment caused serious water damage below and displaced 13 residents. The apartments upstairs were rebuilt and are occupied again. The storefront stayed empty. In 2024, electrical, paint and plumbing work were among the construction costs. A GoFundMe update from last summer described a stalled restoration.

On September 29, Gazetteer SF reported that a new coffee shop, Cafe MD, will open at 901 Divisadero St. "in the coming months." There is no opening date, and the owners could not be reached. Kava Lounge, next door and damaged in the same fire, is still vacant. At the south end of the corridor, near Haight, a fire one week after the Oasis fire closed the 35-year-old Phuket Thai at 244 Divisadero. That building is still vacant and in disrepair. Not every closure ends badly. Banh Mi Viet, another Divisadero business closed by fire in recent years, has reopened.

Taken together, the table shows how these timelines play out. Foghorn reopened within hours and Che Fico in about four months. The Mill is somewhere past three months and depends on its claim. At 901, after four years, a different business is moving in.

The Newcomers Are Building Around the Gaps

This year's new arrivals have landed in spaces that are already standing. Esme, chef Susan Dunn's first solo restaurant, opened in June at 311 Divisadero St. in the former Ragazza space at the Metro Hotel. A few doors south, Olive Juice is opening this month at 354 Divisadero St. Its founder is Hannah Collins Tate, whose firm Roy Hospitality has designed more than 300 restaurants, including Delfina, SPQR and George's Donuts & Merriment.

Olive Juice is starting the way a rebuild does, in stages. A pop-up on the back garden patio, run from a food truck, comes first. The full café will be built out and open next year. The patio pop-up runs Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and, as the San Francisco Standard reported, Tate has said hours will expand. The opening menu includes a seasonal quiche, a dill-forward egg salad sandwich, a Greek yogurt bowl with olive-oil granola, and an espresso shaken with raw cacao, almond butter and olive oil. Tate describes the space she has in mind as "warm, aligned, easy, and free."

The Calendar That Kept Running

While the storefronts have been closed, the neighborhood's regular schedule has continued. These are the fixed dates for the rest of October:

1. Monday, Oct. 5, 7:30 a.m. NOPNA's First Monday Runday meets at Matching Half for a social-paced loop of the Panhandle.
2. Every Sunday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Divisadero Farmers' Market runs year-round in the DMV parking lot at 1377 Fell St.
3. Sunday, Oct. 18 Che Fico reopens at 838 Divisadero St.
4. Friday, Oct. 23 NOPNA's Fourth Friday Happy Hour, at a neighborhood bar still to be announced.
5. Saturday, Oct. 24, noon to 2 p.m. A neighborhood cleanup with NOPNA and Refuse Refuse, meeting at Hayes and Central.
6. Sunday, Oct. 25, 4 to 6 p.m. The Alamo Square Neighborhood Association's Alamo Scare, its Painted Ladies trick-or-treat tradition, with Strange Exchange hosting a costume swap.

Che Fico's return and the Alamo Scare fall one week apart. October looks like the month a part of the street dark since June starts to come back. The Mill's covered windows at 736 and the empty corner at 244 will likely still be there when the costumes come out.

Divisadero works the way a main street works in this city. Businesses share walls, roofs and upstairs apartments, and a fire in one building affects the whole block. Brandi Mayo's architecture training is useful on blocks like this: knowing how a 1929 brick storefront and the mixed-use buildings beside it are put together, and what it takes to bring them back. If you live near the corridor and want a design-minded view of the buildings on your own block, Brandi Mayo is glad to talk it through. Work With Brandi.