The Mission District may yet see another longtime restaurant leave the neighborhood: Cha Cha Cha, located at 2327 Mission St. near 20th Street, will go up for sale this summer if business does not improve, said its current owner, Onur Ozkaynak.
The Cuban-Puerto Rican restaurant has been a mainstay of the neighborhood since 1997, after Philip Belber and Leon Pak had opened the inaugural Cha Cha Cha location in the Haight in 1984. The location is the former home of Original McCarthy’s, one of the first bars to open in the neighborhood after prohibition ended in 1933.
The Haight branch, which Ozkaynak also owns, is doing well. But the Mission outpost, he said, has not seen sales return to pre-pandemic numbers.
“I’m going to wait until May, June, maybe July. If things don’t change, no more Cha Cha Cha in the Mission,” said Ozkaynak on a recent Wednesday, pointing at three customers eating at the bereft bar. “I opened at 11:30 this morning, and it’s 3:30 now, and those are my first customers.”
Cha Cha Cha specializes in Caribbean cuisine, offering dishes that include Jamaican jerk chicken and Cuban ropa vieja, lechon asado and vaca frita.
After years eyeing the spot at 1801 Haight St, Ozkaynak bought the two restaurants from his friend and fellow Turk, Irfan Yalcin.
Yalcin called him in late 2023 proposing to sell the Haight business, but with a caveat: He would also have to buy its Mission location.
Ozkaynak agreed after a few weeks of mulling the proposal. Haight Street was exciting — he lived nearby and it was always busy — but he knew the Mission location needed some work.
Today, nine months after the sale, Ozkaynak’s initial concerns loom large.
The Haight Street location makes money, he says. Mission Street, less so.
“I’ve been patient since I took over to see if I see the improvements,” Ozkaynak said. “I’m not trying to be a hero in San Francisco. Why suffer?”
He’s tried live music and DJs, but those have failed to bring customers consistently. Most recently, Ozkaynak started opening at 11:30 a.m. for lunch but, so far, no success.
On a recent Tuesday around noon, a sign outside the restaurant read “promotion 10 percent off,” but no one was biting and the restaurant was empty.
His is not the only business struggling. Business along that block has not recovered from the pandemic, according to sales tax data from the San Francisco Controller’s Office covering restaurants and hotels. In the third quarter of 2019, sales tax data showed $19,769 collected. In the third quarter of 2024, the most recent for which data is available, the data showed $14,461.
If he sells the Mission spot, he might open a Cha Cha Cha elsewhere; he’s considering a spot in the Marina, or in other cities, like Walnut Creek, Burlingame or Mill Valley.
“It’s so sad to see a restaurant closing, because you work as a busboy, server for 15-20 years to open your own place,” Ozkaynak said. “Then your savings are just gone one day.”
Where else in town is “street vending” allowed and accepted. How does that affect the businesses in the area (they leave in case you didn’t read the article)? We allow too much in the Mission and along Mission. By allowing the mess at the BART plazas, the street vending (food and stolen goods), the drug dealing and use….in the end “slum” is a good term to use.
Mission street looks like a slum these days
Agreed. Mission St is worse than 20yrs ago. The Mission district had the chance to grow for the better in 2010-2020 (w/ market rate housing & mixed use) but activists shut everything down if its wasn’t 100% affordable, and now we have bums & slums.
I wonder if business on that street also suffered due to the red bus lane, now it has way less traffic. Btwn the bike lane & the bus lane, now it has one can stop.
Love Cha cha Cha, it’s was one of the first places I ate back in 1995 on Haight St.
^ Btwn the Valencia bike lane & the Mission bus lane no one in a car can stop (& shop). People just avoid the street altogether and business suffer.
We need good street conditions for small businesses to thrive. Law & order.
Right, you can’t ‘stop and shop’ because somehow when you get on a bus your hands fall off and you can’t push the ‘stop request’ button? Or is it that you can only see a business if you’re behind a windshield and somehow the universe abides and 100 square feet on the street opens for you to put your car there every time you go out?
Do you even live in a city, much less San Francisco?
Ah the bicycle coalition ableism, how droll.
The ghost of Cha Cha Cha may be next to say goodbye. Remember y’all the place was rocking until it was sold to a new owner in 2016. Who promptly chased the staff away and brought in a new crew. Which turned out profoundly off-putting, never went back until last year, if only to check out where they’re at these days. Place was empty, a couple empty-faced kids working behind the bar, which was lit with annoying blue-ish bright little LED lights everywhere. Yeah, no.
Getting closed for roach infestation in 2018 didn’t help.
This is the world tech wrought. First online shopping decimated durable-goods retail; now Doordash, Uber Eats, meal kits and the like are doing it to restaurants. Personally I like getting outside, seeing the city, having that change of scenery rather than sit in the same place I sit all day eating something lukewarm out of a plastic tub. But I suspect there’s less and less people like me in the gentrifying Mission: we are, after all, the headquarters of OpenAI.
Meh, I was sad when the original McCarthys closed. It was a proper authentic old-school Irish bar with cheap drinks, impromptu singalongs and a drunk crowd.
Cha Cha Cha moving in was a part of the first wave of gentrification in the Mission.
I think we all know which bike lane is to blame
Bicycles never buy anything.