What's Opening on Polk Street This Summer in Russian Hill

Walk the two blocks of Polk between Broadway and Vallejo this July and you can read the near future of Russian Hill in the paper on the windows. A former Peet's is being turned into a full-service bagel cafe. The old Lord Stanley dining room is getting a bar built into it. A gym is measuring the space next door. Bi-Rite has been anchoring the corner since 2024. If it feels like the block got denser in the last twelve months, it did.

This is not a general food roundup. Something specific is happening on a very short stretch of sidewalk, and it is worth being precise about what it is. Three of the operators arriving between now and fall have prior lives at Michelin-starred restaurants, in acclaimed Mission bakeries, or in local hospitality brands people already know by name. They are not testing a first concept on a cheap block. They are placing a second or third bet on Russian Hill.

The block, in addresses

The turnover concentrates on a two-block spine. Everything below sits within a five-minute walk of the Broadway and Vallejo intersections.

The interesting thing is not the length of the list. It is how tightly clustered the addresses are, and how much operator history is walking into a corridor that spent a lot of the early 2020s being written off.

The morning shifts first

Bageletto, the Mission-born bagel shop that set up a production kitchen on 14th Street last year, is bringing its all-day bagel program to Polk Street, turning a former coffee chain outpost into a sit-down cafe. The new location will move into 2193 Polk St., the former Peet's between Broadway and Vallejo. The context matters here. Three months after a wave of Peet's Coffee closures shuttered the location in Russian Hill, a popular Mission bagel shop is moving in. A chain retreated. A one-location independent expanded into the same footprint. That is not a small signal for a neighborhood that has watched the opposite happen for years.

The operational model is unusual and worth understanding, because it changes what breakfast on Polk actually looks like. Unlike the mother ship, the Polk Street location won't be a bagel factory fronted by a customer-facing counter. It will be a sit-down cafe where fresh-baked sesame, everything, and cinnamon raisin bagels, plus specialty flavors such as Calabrian chile and cheese, are delivered from the Mission in small batches twice a day, or more often as needed.

Two runs a day is not just a supply-chain footnote. It is why the concept works on this block. Bageletto is more than a grab-and-go breakfast spot. It also offers a wide selection of Italian sandwiches, including a muffuletta, roast beef, and a prosciutto cotto breakfast sandwich, all with meats produced in-house. A morning bagel counter and a lunchtime sandwich counter share the same lease, which is how a single storefront survives the 2 p.m. drop-off that has always haunted Polk Street breakfast spots. Target opening is this summer.

The night shifts next

Six blocks up, the former Lord Stanley space has been dark for a while. That changes with Jupiter Room. Chef Peter Hemsley will open a martini-focused cocktail bar next summer in Russian Hill. Hemsley, who earned a Michelin star for his ambitious seafood restaurant, is partnering with mixologist Trevin Hutchins on a bar called Jupiter Room inside the former Lord Stanley space on Broadway and Polk Street. The address is 2065 Polk.

The programming decision that will affect residents most is not the martini list. It is the calendar. The plan is also to be open seven nights a week, providing a new late-night option for restaurant industry folk after the pandemic killed off a number of those. Seven-night late-night service in Russian Hill has been rare enough that most residents have quietly written it off. That premise is being tested.

The food will not be an afterthought. Jupiter Room will be a "martini-focused project" serving elevated comfort foods like burgers and shrimp cocktail, along with drink mashups such as a hybrid Cuba libre/daiquiri. The pastry program has its own quiet weight: Rieutort-Louis left Dalida late last year, when the team behind Aphotic asked her to be the head chef and pastry chef for Jupiter Room, a cocktail bar due to open this fall on Polk Street. She's excited that Jupiter Room will stay open late, with "midcentury Space Race kind of vibes" both in the decor and food, such as plays on pineapple upside-down cake. She is the Chronicle's 2026 Best Pastry Chef award winner for her creative, playful desserts that bridge sweet and savory.

If you are keeping score on operator pedigree per linear foot of sidewalk, this is a lot of it in one place.

The anchors that made this possible

New operators do not choose a corridor at random. They choose one where the existing tenant mix already tells the story they want their concept to slot into. The block already has that story, largely because a few names have been holding it down for decades.

• Bi-Rite Market, which opened on Polk Street between Broadway and Vallejo in the same spot that Real Food Company used to occupy, gave the block a grocery again in 2024 after years without one. This is the third Bi-Rite market in San Francisco. It has had a presence in the city for nearly 80 years.
• Russian Hill Bookstore at 2162 Polk has been independently owned since 1974, featuring quality used books, gifts, toys, board games, and greeting cards.
• Swensen's, on its corner since 1948, with the old-school signage to match.
• Leopold's at 2400 Polk, the German-Austrian beer hall that looks like an alpine lodge, complete with a deer head and a long communal table where giant two-liter boots are the norm.
• Saint Frank Coffee, which fulfills Russian Hill's fancy coffee shop quota.

Read the list together and Bageletto and Jupiter Room start to make more sense as siting decisions than as roll-of-the-dice openings. They are filling in the exact gaps this block was missing: a real bagel counter, a serious late-night drink.

One more piece coming in the fall

The corridor is not only getting food and drink. FITNESS SF Polk is bringing a new gym to Polk Gulch, Russian Hill, and Nob Hill in Fall 2026. The club features a recovery zone with amenities including Red Light Therapy Pods, Infrared Saunas, Arctic Showers, Hyperice recovery tools, Human Touch massage chairs, HydroMassage beds, and Normatec Compression Therapy. That is a fairly specific bet on the same demographic Bageletto and Jupiter Room are courting: residents who are staying in the neighborhood for the whole day rather than commuting out of it.

A summer weekend that uses the block

If you already live in Russian Hill, a workable Saturday now looks like this:

1. Morning bagel and coffee at Bageletto, 2193 Polk, once it opens. Sit down. The counter is built for it.
2. Walk two blocks to Russian Hill Bookstore at 2162 Polk. Pick up a used cookbook or a card.
3. Lunch is either the muffuletta at Bageletto to go, or a full sandwich stop later at one of the Polk wine bars.
4. Errands at Bi-Rite for the week's produce and staples between Broadway and Vallejo.
5. Swensen's cone in the afternoon if the fog holds off. Turkish coffee and sticky chewy chocolate are the local order.
6. Dinner at Leopold's if you have a group, or something lighter if you are pacing yourself.
7. Late drink at Jupiter Room once it opens, 2065 Polk. If the seven-nights promise holds, this is the new default for a nightcap that does not require a cab out of the neighborhood.

The point of writing that list out is not the itinerary. It is that the itinerary now exists on a two-block radius. Two years ago it did not.

What this actually means

The temptation is to file all of this under "Polk is back." That framing misses what is actually happening. The block is not recovering. It is being re-tenanted by operators who have already run more ambitious concepts elsewhere and are choosing Russian Hill as the place to run their next, more sustainable one. A Michelin-starred chef is opening a martini bar, not a tasting menu. A Mission bagel shop is opening a neighborhood cafe, not a second production facility. A locally owned gym is siting itself among them.

That is a different signal than a hot corridor. It is operators betting on the daily habits of people who already live here, which tends to be the more durable bet. If you have been in the neighborhood a while, the change you are noticing on your walk to Bi-Rite is real, and the summer is when most of it lands.

If you are thinking about how the corridor's evolution fits into a longer-term move within Russian Hill, or between Russian Hill and a neighboring pocket like North Beach or Telegraph Hill, Michelle Pender is available to talk it through. Request a private consultation.