The Bagel Shop Came Back to Polk Street. It Skipped Its Old Address.

For years, the storefront at 2139 Polk Street sat empty, the leftover shell of the neighborhood's only dedicated bagel shop, the Bagelry, before it closed. Walk past it this summer and the natural assumption was straightforward: somebody was finally reopening a bagel shop.

That assumption was wrong. The space is becoming Lorella, a bakery and cafe from Frances and Octavia chef-owner Melissa Perello and pastry chef Melissa Loar, built around the sellout weekend "Saturbake" pop-ups the pair have been running out of Octavia's kitchen since 2024. Croissants, sourdough, pizza, cake, maybe an ice cream cart. No bagels on the announced menu.

Meanwhile, the actual bagel fix landed a few doors away, in a building that has nothing to do with bagels at all.

The Real Bagel Fix Is Down the Block

Bageletto, the Mission bagel shop that built its reputation on a 14th Street production kitchen, took over the old Peet's Coffee at 2193 Polk, between Broadway and Vallejo. Cofounder Kiki Theodorides told the San Francisco Standard in April that the team hoped to open in the next 60 to 90 days, which puts the original target somewhere between mid-June and mid-July. That window has closed. If the timeline held, the Polk Street counter has been slicing bagels for weeks by the time you're reading this.

The Polk Street shop won't work like the Mission original, which has no seating. This one is a sit-down cafe, with bagels trucked over from the 14th Street kitchen in small batches, twice a day or more if the counter runs hot. Sesame, everything, cinnamon raisin, plus rotating specialty flavors like Calabrian chile and cheese. Theodorides has been direct about what the shop is selling on: freshness, not novelty. Her words to the Standard were blunt. "You're eating them literally within one to four hours after they came out of the oven."

What matters here isn't just that Russian Hill got its bagels back. It's that the bagels didn't come back to the address associated with bagels. They came back to the address associated with a national coffee chain, down the block, because that's where the space and the timing lined up. The old Bagelry's footprint went to a business that has never sold a bagel in its life.

Lorella Isn't Filling a Gap. It's Importing One.

Lorella is worth watching for a different reason: it's not opening because Russian Hill lacked a bakery. It's opening because Perello and Loar already proved, twice a month for two years, that people would line up around the block for what they were making somewhere else. The Saturbake pop-ups started in spring 2024 as an overflow valve, Octavia's regulars kept begging for bread the restaurant could only spare a few loaves of per day. The bake sales sold out fast enough that Loar has described the reaction in blunt terms: "We sold out in like 10 minutes! Oh my God. I felt so bad."

That's a business plan with the demand curve already tested, just not on Polk Street. Architect Seth Boor, who recently reworked Octavia's dining room, is handling the buildout, including cutting a second skylight into the ceiling. The design direction leans toward blush pink and mint green tile, with a pastry case up front and maybe a couple of sidewalk seats. Lorella is aiming to open before the holidays, and once it does, it will also supply bread to Frances and Octavia, meaning a Russian Hill storefront becomes the backstage kitchen for two established restaurants across town.

Two openings, a few doors apart, and neither one is inheriting what used to occupy its walls. The old bagel shop's address became a pastry operation. The old coffee chain's address became the bagel shop. If you were mapping Polk Street by what each building used to be, you'd get the wrong picture for both.

Down the Block, Handroll Season Just Got Crowded

The same pattern shows up further north, minus the irony and plus a straight numbers question. At 2360 Polk, in the old Zero& space, a concept called Handroll Hawker has been quietly under construction since at least March, with coming-soon signage promising "sushi on-the-go" and no confirmed opening date. What makes the location interesting isn't the storefront it's replacing. It's the storefront it's a short walk from.

Saru Handroll Bar sits at 2206 Polk, a few blocks south, and it did not arrive as a handroll concept either. It grew out of Kinjo, a Michelin-starred omakase restaurant that the same team converted into a more casual, walk-in-only format. Saru runs no reservations, serves a five-roll edomae-style set for $52, and has racked up more than 240 reviews on Yelp praising the fish and the nori. It is, by most measures, the most reliably busy restaurant on this stretch of the street.

Handroll Hawker isn't opening because Zero& left a gap in the market for whatever Zero& used to sell. It's opening because Saru already answered the question of whether Russian Hill would support a dedicated handroll bar, and the answer was yes, loudly enough that a second operator wants a piece of the same appetite a few blocks away. Two handroll bars on one stretch of Polk either means the street can support both, or it means one of them is about to find out the hard way that proximity to a proven concept isn't the same as being the concept people already trust.

Here's What's Landing Where, In One Place

The Anchors Aren't Moving

None of this is happening in a vacuum. A few doors from the new bakery scramble, Bi-Rite Market has been anchoring the 2140 Polk block since 2024, in the old Real Food Co. building, with a 26-year lease and a full grocery, sandwich counter, and fish case. Swensen's Ice Cream has been making flavors on-site since Earl Swensen opened the shop in 1948, right along the cable car line, and one of its original flavors gets a name-check in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Saint Frank Coffee still holds down the espresso end of the street, and the Russian Hill Bookstore still stocks new and used titles in the same cozy space it always has.

That stability matters for reading the turnover correctly. Polk Street has reinvented its retail identity before. It ran as a German immigrant shopping corridor before the 1906 earthquake, then became one of San Francisco's earliest LGBTQ commercial strips, home to California Hall and the city's first Gay Pride Parade in 1972. The Cinch remains the one historic gay bar still standing on the street. Reinvention is the norm here, not the disruption. What's different this time is the mechanism: businesses aren't filling the exact hole left by whatever closed. They're planting a proven concept from somewhere else in whatever space became available, regardless of what used to be there.

What This Means If You Live Here

If you've been walking past 2139 Polk assuming another bagel shop is coming, adjust your expectations and start planning around croissants and sourdough instead. If you've been wondering where the neighborhood's bagel fix went, check the old Peet's a few doors south. And if you're choosing between two handroll counters within a few blocks of each other this fall, the honest advice is to try both and see which one earns your regular order, because reputation from across town doesn't guarantee it survives contact with Polk Street.

For updates as these three spaces actually open their doors, Russian Hill Neighbors, the volunteer group behind much of the block's community advocacy, is a better source than guessing from the sidewalk.

Understanding a block like this, the closures, the reputations that transplant well, the ones that don't, is the same skill that goes into reading a neighborhood's real estate market with any precision. Austin Klar covers both. Work with Austin if you want that kind of read on Russian Hill, whether you're watching the bakeries or the listings.