Walk the 2100 block of Polk on a Saturday morning this September and you will pass a papered-over storefront at 2139, right across the street from the Bi-Rite Market that opened here in 2024. The paper has been up for months. Behind it, according to permits and press, a bakery called Lorella is finishing a gut renovation. It is not choosing this block by accident, and neither is anyone else who has opened, or is about to open, within a few storefronts of it this year.
That is the real story of Polk Street in 2026. Not a neighborhood having a moment, but a single address, 2140 Polk, acting like a magnet for every serious operator scouting the corridor. Understanding why tells you more about how this stretch of Russian Hill actually works than any list of new restaurants could.
What Bi-Rite Actually Did to the Block
Before it was a grocery store, 2140 Polk was the last location of Real Food Co., a health-food chain that had occupied the space since 1976. When that closed, Bi-Rite signed a 26-year lease and turned it into something bigger than a neighborhood market. At roughly 4,000 square feet, it is Bi-Rite's largest store, about twice the size of its original Mission location and 50 percent bigger than its NoPa outpost, and it now doubles as the company's headquarters. Owner Sam Mogannam has said the goal was to make it an anchor for the busy block, and the foot traffic it generates has become the thing every subsequent opening on Polk is measured against.
That is worth sitting with for a second. A grocery store, not a bar or a restaurant, is the reason this stretch of Polk is drawing attention. Everything that has followed is a response to that fact.
The Bakery Built to Face It
Lorella is the clearest evidence. It comes from Melissa Perello, the chef-owner behind Frances and Octavia, and pastry chef Melissa Loar, who has run Octavia's kitchen since 2021. For more than two years, since the pop-ups began in spring 2024, the two of them have sold out weekly "Saturbake" events out of Octavia, testing sourdough loaves and seasonal croissants on a devoted following. When they decided to make it permanent, they did not look for space in a neighborhood already known for pastry. They filed the business under Polk Street Bakeshop Partners LLC and took the storefront directly across from Bi-Rite.
Perello has talked about dessert as inseparable from a full dining experience, and Lorella's menu reads like an extension of that idea rather than a departure from it: country levain, savory croissants filled with things like Chicago beef and giardiniera, a slice-or-whole lumberjack cake carried over from Frances, and eventually doughnuts finished in an ultraviolet glaze. Architect Seth Boor is handling the buildout, and some of the grain will come from the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project. None of that required Polk Street specifically. The location across from Bi-Rite did.
A Bagel Desert, Filled From the Mission
A few blocks south, between Broadway and Vallejo, Bageletto opened this summer in a former Peet's Coffee that had been sitting empty since a wave of chain closures earlier in the year. Despite San Francisco's crowded bagel scene, Russian Hill had never had a dedicated bagel counter of its own. Bageletto had already proven its bagels in the Mission, batch-baked and delivered from its production kitchen on 14th Street, before cofounder Kiki Theodorides decided Polk Street was worth a second address at all. The company has said it is not looking to expand further beyond this one location. Polk earned the exception, not the other way around.
Two Handroll Bars, One Playbook
Further up the hill, a restaurant called Handroll Hawker is opening this fall at 2360 Polk, just blocks from Kaiyō Handroll Bar in Cow Hollow. It is not an original idea being tested here for the first time. It is a format that already works elsewhere in the city, arriving on Polk because the concept is proven and the block can support it. Sorella, an Italian restaurant at the crest of Polk with a kitchen led by chef Fernanda Baggio and overseen by the well-known Suzette Gresham, follows the same logic: established talent, a format that has already worked somewhere else, planted on Polk because the corridor's traffic finally justifies it.
Here is a quick reference for what has landed, and what is still coming, along this run of Polk Street this year.
| Business | Address | What it is | Status this fall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bi-Rite Market | 2140 Polk St | Full-scale grocery, company HQ | Open since 2024, the block's anchor |
| Lorella | 2139 Polk St | Bakery and cafe from Frances/Octavia team | Opening this fall |
| Bageletto | 2193 Polk St | Bagel and sandwich counter, Mission-based | Open |
| Handroll Hawker | 2360 Polk St | Handroll bar | Opening this fall |
| Sorella | Crest of Polk | Italian restaurant and bar | Open |
Nothing Here Was Invented on Polk
What connects all of it is that none of these businesses are first attempts. Perello and Loar already run two respected restaurants. Bageletto already had a line out the door in the Mission. Handroll Hawker is copying a format that Kaiyō proved works in Cow Hollow. Sorella's kitchen leadership already has a reputation to protect. Every one of them is a known quantity choosing Polk Street on purpose, which is a different story than a neighborhood suddenly becoming a place where people take chances.
That is worth remembering the next time someone tells you a street is "having a moment." Polk Street already had its long-running fixtures doing the quiet, unglamorous work of keeping the block alive: the Russian Hill Bookstore, open since 1974, still stocking a shelf dedicated to San Francisco history; the Cinch, the last bar left from Polk's decades as the city's original gay commercial strip before that community moved toward the Castro; the New Spot on Polk, a family-owned diner that has served the same corner since 2017 and still lists its house potatoes on every plate. None of those businesses needed Bi-Rite to survive. What changed is that a grocery store's arrival gave newer, more selective operators a reason to bet on the same six or seven storefronts, instead of scattering across the corridor or skipping it for Hayes Valley or the Mission.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
If your daily walk already runs down Polk, the useful takeaway is not which restaurant to try first. It is that the street's center of gravity has a specific, findable location now, and it is not the middle of the block or the busiest intersection. It is the storefront across from a grocery store that opened two years ago and quietly proved the traffic was real. Watch what continues to open within sight of 2140 Polk, and you will have a better read on where the corridor is headed than any general sense that the neighborhood is "improving."
For a closer look at how Russian Hill fits alongside San Francisco's other neighborhoods, from the Marina to Bernal Heights, Brandi Mayo keeps a running guide to the city's distinct pockets at brandimayo.com/neighborhoods. If Polk Street's evolution has you thinking about what a home in Russian Hill, or nearby, might be worth to you now or down the road, Work With Brandi for a conversation grounded in the same kind of block-by-block detail that shapes this street.
