Some weeks, the most regular visitors to the South Park oval have been robots. OpenMind, a robotics company near the park, told Mission Local that it sends humanoid, wheeled and four-legged robots into the park for testing. The goal is to train them to work around people in retail and healthcare settings. A humanoid crossing the grass under the London plane trees is about as clear a sign as you'll find that the offices around San Francisco's oldest public park have filled back up.
The restaurant spaces took longer. In July, Mission Local reported that the oval was down to one restaurant. As of this week it has two, and a Filipino-Californian bakery is aiming to open a block over on 2nd Street in December. Both bakeries are small Bay Area operations. One moved over from a few blocks away, and the other spent years as a pop-up before finding a permanent home.
The offices came back first
South Park's recovery has followed the money, and in this case the money was venture capital. Flourish Ventures opened its San Francisco office at 140 South Park in 2022. Touring Capital followed in 2025. Notable Capital and Coatue both list offices at 21 South Park, and other investors work within walking distance. A commercial broker told Mission Local that the area is mainly an office market. Office rents per square foot there have risen significantly, partly because early-stage startups with funding want the address, while retail has stayed weaker and more volatile.
You could see the gap between the two from the park benches. South Park Cafe closed in March 2020. Mexico Au Parc closed in 2021, and its space was still empty in July. The Butler and the Chef, a French bistro that made it through the dot-com bust, closed at the end of 2017. Mission Local reported that a tenant had signed a lease on the Mexico Au Parc space and then defaulted.
Here is how the oval's food spaces have changed, by year:
- End of 2017: The Butler and the Chef closes at 155A South Park.
- March 2020: South Park Cafe closes.
- 2021: Mexico Au Parc closes on the ground floor of the Madrid Hotel.
- May 2024: Caffe Centro reopens at 102 South Park as a worker-owned collective.
- July 2026: Mission Local reports Caffe Centro is the only restaurant on the park.
- October 24, 2026: Flour & Branch soft-opens at 155A South Park, in the old Butler and the Chef space.
The café that kept the oval going
For two years, Caffe Centro was the place keeping lunch alive on the park. Mission Housing, its landlord, wrote in May 2024 that four former employees had taken over the business. It reopened as a worker-owned collective, with a celebration at 102 South Park. Co-owner Erwin Ganschow has worked there since the early 1990s. He told Mission Local that the café survived because Mission Housing was willing to take an unusual risk on that arrangement.
His description of the turnaround is a good gauge of where the oval stands. "We're doing roughly three-quarters of our pre-pandemic business," Ganschow told Mission Local in July, adding that in 2024 "South Park was dead." He linked the rebound to workers coming back to the growing number of tech and investment offices nearby, and he said he welcomed more restaurants because they could give those workers a reason to leave their desks. Mission Local described its wood-lined interior as a little worn-in and its menu as simple and relatively affordable, and Ganschow called the place "kind of old-school" compared with the busy Blue Bottle about a block away on Second Street.
155A South Park has a tenant again
The space that sat empty after the Butler and the Chef closed now belongs to Flour & Branch. It soft-opened on October 24 and held its grand-opening weekend October 30 through November 1. It didn't come from far away. Founder Lauren Arnsdorff started the business online in 2020, and her previous storefront was at 493 Third Street, a few blocks from the park. In July, she told Mission Local that people walking by regularly said the park needed another restaurant.
The move also changed what kind of business it is. The Third Street shop was a bakery. The South Park space runs all day, with pastry and coffee in the morning, brunch until 2 and supper after that. The bakery's site also lists non-alcoholic apéritifs, adaptogen tonics, dessert dim sum, outdoor seating, memberships, private events and a chef's table tucked into the courtyard. In its May preview, the SF Standard described the dessert dim sum as a cart of doughnuts, truffles and canelés that comes through the dining room every hour, with returning favorites like stuffed French toast and "brookies."
According to Tablehopper, Flour & Branch is open Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Brunch runs until 2 p.m., and supper goes from 2 p.m. to close. SFist also covered the reopening the day the grand-opening weekend started. Ganschow told Mission Local his recovery showed up in busier midweek lunches. Flour & Branch's hours run past lunch into early evening and through the weekend, so the oval now has a table to sit at after the office day ends.
Second Street is filling in the edges
The same pattern is showing up a block east. Over the past several months, the stretch of 2nd Street between the park and the ballpark has added operators with deep roots in the Bay Area food scene:
- Casa Sofia, 701 2nd St. Chef Carlos Altamirano opened his largest restaurant across from Oracle Park in May. He also runs Altamirano Restaurant & Bar, La Costanera and Mochica. Casa Sofia is named after his daughter, and the menu is Latin-inspired with a Californian focus, including Sofia's Meatballs topped with Mexican mole and grilled octopus with chimichurri. Eater SF put it on its list of the city's best new restaurants.
- La Kalidád, 680 A 2nd St. This Filipino-Californian pastry pop-up from Angelica Nulud and Paul Faraon is aiming for a December opening, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's October update.
La Kalidád fits the oval's pattern most closely. The Chronicle reported that the couple spent two years searching for a permanent space around the Bay Area before choosing South Beach. Nulud launched the business in 2021 after baking at Vive la Tarte and Stonemill Matcha. Faraon, who used to cook at Cotogna, joined full-time in 2023, when they started showing up weekly at East Bay farmers markets. The café's planned menu includes a mango sago croissant tart, a calamansi blueberry cruffin and a croissant version of mais con yelo. The drinks include pandan matcha, salted latik coffee and a calamansi espresso tonic. It plans to open Wednesday through Sunday to start, with seating on a mezzanine, and to bring back holiday pies such as calamansi curd and turon. Hoodline reported that the owners planned to keep selling at farmers markets while they set up the storefront.
Put these together and you have an older worker-owned café on the oval, a bakery that moved over from Third Street, a chef with several restaurants in the city opening on 2nd Street, and a farmers-market pop-up about to get its first storefront. None of them is betting on foot traffic that isn't there yet. They're opening for the office workers Ganschow saw returning in July.
What's going on around the park this week
The ballpark is having its own off-season event this week. The Ballpark Back 9 runs November 4 through 8 and turns Oracle Park into a nine-hole course. Tee boxes sit on several levels, the greens are in the outfield, and one hole tees off from the warning track after a walk through the Giants' tunnel. New this year is a course bar inside the Giants Clubhouse, and players also get access to The Gotham Club. Player tickets start at $99 plus fees. Non-golfers who want to tag along with a group can buy a clubhouse-only pass for $25 plus fees.
Back at the oval, the former Mexico Au Parc space on the Madrid Hotel's ground floor was still vacant when Mission Local reported on the park in July, after a signed lease fell through.
We follow storefront changes like these because they shape day-to-day life around South Park and South Beach. If you'd like to talk about what's opening around the oval and what it could mean for your plans, Denis Lancerin Group is happy to walk the blocks with you. Let's Work Together.
