Mission Buzz: Sayonara to French-inspired bakery. Bienvenue to homemade onigiri and bento boxes

Konbini, a successful pop-up for onigiri, opened a brick-and-mortar shop about six weeks ago at 2790 Harrison St., near 24th Street, at the storefront previously occupied by Humphry Slocombe, the beloved ice cream shop known for its extravagant flavors that closed in 2024.

Konbini sells homemade onigiri, bento boxes on the weekends and Asian inspired drinks and snacks from local and nonlocal manufactures. Amongst the selection customers may find: furikake granola, Szechuan peppercorn jam, chutney and black-sesame, milk-chocolate brittle.

Owner Emily Tung said she wanted to create a French pret kind of a shop – ready-to-go prepared food or snacks – but with an Asian twist.

“I did it because if I ever needed to go get Asian snacks or Asian ingredients, I’d either have to go all the way to Japantown or drive over to H-Mart,” said Tung, who lives in the Bernal Heights area.

“I thought, well, I wonder if there are other people in this community who are having the same problem as me, and decided to open up Konbini.”

Despite eating onigiri for a long time, Tung is fairly new at making the popular Japanese dish. She started buying them at Berkeley Bowl when she went to UC Berkeley to do part of her lab research for a microbiology master program from San Francisco State University.

It was also around the time her first business, Unicorn Meat, which manufactured plant-based meat products, was about to close.

“I was like, ‘well, I have all these like rice cookers, and there isn’t really great onigiri around. I should just make my own,’” said Tung. 

Konbini is open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Only a large metal roll-down door remains where the  pinks and flowery front facade of Le Dix-Sept, the French inspired bakery at 3376 18th St. near Capp Street, once greeted customers. The bakery closed on April 18th.

Owner Michelle Hernandez said she decided to close the shop when the lease was up because the space had never been able to support her original vision due to the need for “essential internal structural improvements.”

The need for improvements kept Hernandez from ever baking at the shop. Instead, she used a commercial kitchen for four years until she opened her second location in Potrero Hill in November 2024.

Closing the space, Hernandez said, is bittersweet because of the regular clientele and community she had created. The space occasionally hosted pop-ups, art events and a book drive for the Mission Neighborhood Center.

It was also part of the cafecito tour by Mission Loteria and part of an edible excursion tour of the Mission.

“I was just there earlier and our clients came by and they were saying how sad and upset they were,” said Hernandez. 

“And we feel the same way.”

Le Dix-Sept started as a pop-up in 2011 after Hernandez came back from Paris where she lived for three years pursuing a Le Grande Diplôme at the Le Cordon Blue and working in restaurants.

After almost 10 years selling at markets and as a pop-up, Hernandez opened her shop on 18th Street in 2020 and decided to call it Le Dix-Sept (seventeen in French) because aside from being her lucky number, she also lived in the seventeenth district during her time in Paris.

Hernandez, whose dad is Mexican and mom is Filipina via Guam, said that upon returning to San Francisco, she wanted to draw inspiration from the ingredients found in both her cultures (chiles, fresh fruits, hibiscus and vegetables) and mesh them together using the French techniques she learned in Paris. 

Le Dix-Sept is also known for serving “botanical pastries,” meaning that every pastry has a botanical element to it.

While gone from the Mission now, Hernandez does not rule out a comeback if the right space comes along.

Le Dix-Sept’s second (and now only) location at 455 Carolina St., near Mariposa Street, is open Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Just a couple doors down from Le Dix-Sept, Fox and Lion Bread, the Mission District’s beloved bakery and coffee shop, celebrated its third birthday a few days ago.

Fox and Lion opened in 2023 at 3350 18th St. at Capp Street after its owner, Xan Devoss, started selling her bread at Mission Mercado in 2020. 

Devoss had previously operated the space in Bayview-Hunter’s Point from 2014 to 2022, but decided to move to the Mission because of the clientele she had created selling at the farmer’s market.

Fox and Lion hosted a celebration on Saturday April 18 with music performances and pop-ups.

An anniversary t-shirt in collaboration with local clothing brand, About Being Seen, is also available at Fox and Lion Bread.

Valencia Live is officially back on May 14. For the second year in a row, the Mission District’s night market will take over a stretch of Valencia Street and turn it into a space for live music, family games, food, drinks and pop-ups.

Valencia Live drew more than 45,000 people in its first year, according to Civic Joy Fund, one of the event’s organizers. 

Unlike last year, where the market took place between 16th and 19ths streets every month, the location of Valencia live will shift every two months.

It will be on Valencia between 16th and 19th streets in May and June; Valencia between 17th and 20th streets in July and August and Valencia between 18th and 21st streets in September and October.

Valencia Live is the second Thursday of every month and it runs from May to October from 5 to 10 p.m.