What's New on Clement Street in the Richmond This Summer

Walk east from 25th Avenue on a Saturday morning and the sidewalk tells you more than any market report. Butcher paper covers a storefront where a Korean barbecue place fed regulars for eight years. Two blocks down, a line spills out of a pizzeria that opened in April. Sawhorses sit outside a former lighting showroom. The Richmond has always turned over quietly, but the pace and the type of tenant coming in are both worth paying attention to right now.

Here is the shortest version of what is happening: a wave of better-financed operators is moving into spaces where smaller independents once stood, and the summer 2026 opening slate is the most concentrated stretch of new arrivals Clement Street has seen in years. If you live in the neighborhood, that changes where you eat this weekend, where you meet a friend for coffee on a Tuesday, and which storefront gaps you can finally stop wondering about.

The Corridor's New Faces, One Address at a Time

The cluster of openings between Arguello and 20th Avenue is dense enough to be worth mapping. Everything below has either opened in the last few months or has a signed lease and a public timeline.

A few of these deserve more than a row.

Rose Pizzeria carries the biggest reputation of the bunch. The Berkeley original was opened in 2021 by Gerad Gobel and Alexis Rorabaugh and named one of the 22 best pizzerias in the country by The New York Times. The Richmond outpost took over 1 Clement, at Arguello, and is drawing hours-long lines as of late spring. If you have not been, plan for an early dinner or a late one.

Clementina is the quieter story with the more specific hook. The restaurant was formerly Bettola, but rebranded and reopened as Clementina on March 12, with a menu rooted in Italian tradition, house-made pastas, pizzas and shared plates, and by removing gluten from the kitchen entirely, offers something rare for many with gluten sensitivities: the ability to sit down, order freely and experience a meal without hesitation. A fully gluten-free Italian kitchen is unusual anywhere in the city.

Kissaten Hi-Fi at 189 Sixth Ave is a smaller footprint doing something specific. It leans into the Japanese kissaten tradition of slowing down, and the menu pairs single cultivar matcha with Filipino-inspired coffee. It is a café that rewards sitting rather than grabbing a cup and leaving.

Kitchen Commons is the most interesting non-restaurant move on the corridor. Jeff Hanak, an owner of Liholiho Yacht Club, is opening Kitchen Commons, a "neighborhood shop for the home chef," in the former Spanish Table location in the Inner Richmond, stocking cookware, prepared food, and beverages, planning to host cooking classes and other food-focused events, with a fall opening planned. The Spanish Table, the specialty grocer that occupied the space, closed last winter, and per December 2025 court filings the owners owed at least $25,000 in back rent. Hanak has been open about the strategy. He plans to keep it primarily a daytime place, and won't try to compete on the pastry front, with croissant legend Arsicault just around the corner.

Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee

The caffeine density on Clement is starting to look almost comic. Three cafés with signed leases have been announced within blocks of each other. Amy Lee plans to open Evermore at 200 Clement St. this year, serving Saint Frank coffee alongside single-origin chocolates, mooncakes, and soft-serve. Café Réveille has confirmed a fifth location at 324 Clement St., and Maya Mori's Roots & Craft has signed a lease at 17th Avenue and Clement, where it plans to focus on Japanese teas and rotating pop-ups.

That is on top of Kissaten Hi-Fi, Hologram, and the café component of Kitchen Commons. For anyone who has watched the corridor for a decade, the pattern is clear: coffee is where operators are betting the daytime foot traffic exists.

The Night Market Comes Back for a Third Year

If you have not walked through it before, the Heart of the Richmond District Night Market is worth planning around. The third year runs on the 3rd Saturday of each month, with 2026 dates on May 16, June 20, and July 18, extending through August. Blocks close from 22nd to 25th Avenue on Clement, 4 to 8 pm.

Two things have changed for 2026. The organizers have expanded food offerings to include more hot food. And the May 16th edition joined forces with Alamo Elementary to celebrate its 100th year, with the Alamo team taking over 23rd Avenue between Clement and California with food vendors, a 21+ beer garden, archival Alamo history, school tours, kid activities, a DJ and more. The July and August dates are family-oriented but late enough to feel like an actual evening out.

If you want to skip the crowd, arrive at 4 pm sharp. If you want the atmosphere, come at 6.

What the Turnover Actually Means for Regulars

A roundup of new openings is only half the story. The other half is what these tenants are replacing, because a corridor that keeps its character across turnover reads differently than one that quietly loses it.

The recent examples from Mission Local's Richmond Buzz reporting are worth reading in order. At 2140 Clement, K-Elements BBQ, which drew fans of all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ from near and far, closed in November after more than eight years in business, citing a landlord rent increase to a level they could not sustain. At 6000 California, after Angie Rando retired and closed Angelina's in 2024, the space was quietly taken over by David Rio Chai, which kept much of the look and feel of Angelina's, which opened up shop in 1983. A few blocks over, Toy Boat at 401 Clement was taken over by local bakery and cafe chain Jane in 2020.

Even the anchor tenants are changing hands. Bi-Rite, the upscale market with three locations across the city, has signed a lease on a building at 6001 California St. in the Outer Richmond, taking over the former 6001 California Market space, a historic building with a vintage neon sign, and targeting a 2027 opening. For grocery shoppers who lost the corner market two years ago, that is a real change to the neighborhood pantry.

Not every arrival is food or drink. Ascent Athletics is coming to 6101 Geary Blvd, and after a few months vacant, the old Lamps Plus store at 4700 Geary Blvd. and 11th Avenue has a new tenant: staging company Awhile has taken over the place to use as a storage facility. A staging warehouse is not the sort of storefront that draws you in on a Saturday, but it is a signal about how much residential activity the neighborhood is generating right now.

The one throughline: independent, family-run tenants are being replaced by better-funded operators, sometimes local, sometimes not. Mission Local has tracked a wave of turnover on Clement, and highlighted a pattern of better-financed tenants moving in where smaller independent businesses once stood. Owners opening on Clement say they aim to create neighborhood-focused spaces, and residents are likely to watch closely to see whether this new wave of cafés keeps local commerce grounded in the community or gradually reshapes it.

A Weekend Plan That Uses All of It

If you are trying to actually eat and drink your way through the changes without a spreadsheet, here is a working sequence:

1. Saturday morning. Coffee and a pastry at Breadbelly at Clement and 15th, which has earned local loyalty and national accolades since opening in 2018, now a James Beard Award-recognized bakery. Arrive before 10 or expect a wait.
2. Late morning walk. Head west on Clement toward the ocean. The stretch between 22nd and 25th is where the night market sets up, and the walk gives you a feel for the block scale before it fills with vendors.
3. Lunch. The Richmond Neighborhood Center runs the Clement Lunch Lane Initiative from 19th to 26th Avenue, a program showcasing diverse food offerings from local restaurants with exclusive lunch specials weekdays from 12 to 2 pm. Weekend visitors miss it, but weekday residents should not.
4. Afternoon coffee. Kissaten Hi-Fi at 189 Sixth Ave if you want to sit. Grab-and-go from any of the incoming cafés once they open.
5. Dinner. Rose Pizzeria if you booked ahead, Clementina if you did not, Chapeau or Le Soleil if you want the version of Clement that has been steady for years.

The Richmond does not shout. It rewards residents who keep showing up on the same blocks and notice the third or fourth time the storefront has changed. Summer 2026 is a good time to be paying attention.

If you are thinking about where you want to be rooted in the Richmond, or how the corridor's shifts might inform where you buy or sell along the Richmond District, Michelle Pender offers a private consultation grounded in the same block-by-block knowledge that made this post possible. Request one anytime through the contact page.