For 46 years you could only get a sandwich at Corsagna Deli on a weekday, in daylight. Farther west, at 2055 Union, the 2-month-old cafe in the old Metro Theatre building now pours Ukrainian wine until 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Between the two, at 1838 Union, Kaiyo Handroll Bar keeps its kitchen open until 11 on weekends and its bar until 1 a.m. Cow Hollow's Union Street is moving away from the lunch hour and toward the early morning and the late night.
A deli built around the school day
Corsagna Deli at 1668 Union St. announced it would serve its final sandwiches on Oct. 2, SFGATE reported in September. Tablehopper had the news first. The address has changed hands within one family over three generations. In the 1970s Egidio Giampaoli took over an accordion studio there and turned it into an Italian bakery. His daughter Elvira Giampaoli took over in 1980 and made it a deli, because customers kept asking for sandwiches. Her daughters, Angie Denardo and Paola Berdichevsky, grew up behind the counter and went on to manage it. Regulars ordered the pesto chicken panini and the Mr. Italiano, which is salami, coppa, mortadella and provolone.
Corsagna's hours explain a lot about it. Denardo told SFGATE that the deli only opened on weekdays during the day. That schedule let the family run a Union Street business and still be home in the evenings, the same reason her mother had wanted the job. For decades the street could support a shop that closed before dinner and stayed dark all weekend. The places opening this fall are built on the hours Corsagna chose not to work.
The Metro building has always followed the clock
The clearest example is 2055 Union St. The building opened in 1924 as the Metropolitan, designed by James and Merritt Reid. Its facade combines Spanish Colonial and Art Deco elements, according to SFGATE. For most of a century it was an evening building, a movie house that filled up after dark. In 2012 a proposal to convert it into an Equinox gym went to the Planning Commission. A January 2014 commission motion describes the conversion as under construction. As a gym, the building's busiest hours moved to the morning.
This fall a cafe arrived to feed the people that change brought in. Franko & Friends shares the 2055 Union address at 2055-B. From behind the counter, owner Iryna Nevozhai watches a steady stream of people in workout clothes heading to the gym, The San Francisco Standard reported. She planned her menu with that stream in mind.
"Union Street is full of gyms and studios and people looking for something protein-style," Nevozhai told The Standard.
So the menu leans on salads and syrniki, Ukrainian farmer's cheese pancakes made heavy on protein. The coffee is from Hedge Coffee. Nevozhai moved to California from Ukraine a decade ago. In 2024 she opened a smaller sister cafe, Franko & Co., in Sausalito. Both are named for Ivan Franko, the Ukrainian writer and philosopher.
The Metro building is worth looking at again for how the cafe sits inside it. In Sausalito, Nevozhai designed the cafe to look like a Ukrainian house. For Union Street she told The Standard she wanted something "on the edge of centuries," with only a hint of Ukrainian roots. Ukrainian American artist Valentyna Zasutska painted a modern mural of animals and plants on the walls. So a 1920s theater shell now holds a gym and, beside it, a cafe that deliberately sits between old and new.
Evenings come back to the theater address
The schedule is what makes Franko & Friends part of a trend and not just another coffee shop. It opened serving coffee and brunch from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Starting the last Friday in October, it added wine and light bites Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. The evening menu includes spreads and caviar, plus California and European wines. That list includes Ukrainian bottles Nevozhai calls difficult to get, because the war has closed many wineries. She lights candles at night. She also wants to host rotating work by local artists and community events such as book discussions, "for all this community on Union Street," as she put it to The Standard.
In other words, one address now runs from early-morning workouts through brunch and on to candlelit wine, under a marquee that was built to sell evening tickets.
Kaiyo pushes the night past midnight
Kaiyo Handroll Bar at 1838 Union St. stretches the evening further. John Park's Brick by Brick Hospitality Group had run Kaiyo in this Cow Hollow space before. Eater SF reported that the group turned back to Union Street as office workers returned, and reopened on Sept. 11 after two years away.
The kitchen is led by chef Alex Reccio and chef de cuisine Kenji Sawada, and the menu is built around Nikkei hand rolls. Examples include a lomo saltado roll with A5 wagyu and shoestring potatoes, and a take on arroz con pato with flash-seared duck and sansho pepper. Instead of standard sushi rice, the rolls use cilantro rice or chicha morada rice, which is infused with Peruvian purple corn. Around the rolls are ceviche and tiradito, aji gallina croquettes, and a scallop udon in a dashi cream made with Peruvian chiles and mentaiko. Danny Louie runs the drinks. His list includes the Deiji, a margarita variation with shiso and sakura, and the Katakana, a savory tomato-and-gin drink. Zero-proof options include a matcha drink called Kukki.
Park described the goal as making the room work after the food stops. Once the kitchen closes, Kaiyo plans to run as a cocktail lounge with limited bites, DJs and a later closing time. "It'll be more of a sophisticated cocktail lounge than anything else," he told Eater SF.
The new clock, side by side
The posted hours show the shift. Corsagna kept weekday daytime hours, while the two newcomers start at breakfast or late afternoon and run long.
| Address | Business | Hours as published |
|---|---|---|
| 1668 Union St. | Corsagna Deli | Weekdays, daytime only; final day announced as Oct. 2 |
| 2055-B Union St. | Franko & Friends | 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily; 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday |
| 1838 Union St. | Kaiyo Handroll Bar | 4 p.m. to midnight Tuesday through Thursday; 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday; 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday |
Kaiyo opens at 4 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday, which is roughly when a weekday deli would be finishing for the day. On Fridays and Saturdays it serves food until 11 p.m. and stays open for two hours after that. Between Franko & Friends at 8 a.m. and Kaiyo's 1 a.m. weekend close, this stretch of Union Street now has something open for about 17 hours of a Saturday.
Morning plans for a different crowd
Two projects announced for the street aim at another part of the day: the weekday morning, for people who aren't heading to a gym.
Sue Perichon's Little Maison is described as San Francisco's first play cafe. It is going into part of the former Sur La Table building on Union Street, The Standard reported in August, with an opening expected in late 2026. The plan has a cafe at the front, partnering with local businesses for food and coffee, and a play area for small children behind it. Hoodline's profile of Perichon framed it as a bet on parents who feel invisible.
Breakfast Little, owned by Andrew Martinez-Perez, plans a second location at 2223 Union St., the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April. The menu is breakfast burritos, sandwiches, oatmeal bowls, avocado toast and coffee.
With both on the way, the street is filling the morning hours Corsagna never worked, now that the evening is covered. A shop built around the school day is being replaced, in part, by businesses built around the toddler's morning, the post-workout brunch and the nightcap. The buildings themselves include a 1924 theater and a former kitchenware store.
Union Street's commercial buildings keep outlasting the businesses inside them, and the Metro has now been a cinema, a gym and a candlelit wine bar. If you own a home near the corridor and want to talk about how the street's architecture and its new hours fit into your property's story, Colm Glass and the Design Collection team would be glad to walk Union Street with you. Contact us.
