The interior of the Fly Trap in San Francisco, Calif. is photographed on Tuesday, December 9, 2008. (Photo by Mark Constantini/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/Hearst Newspapers via Getty ImagThis week’s APEC summit was supposed to flood San Francisco with 20,000 visitors ready to pump millions of dollars into the local economy. But so far, the massive event is having a negative impact on the city’s fine dining restaurants.
SFGATE spoke to five restaurants inside and outside the downtown closure zones about what is shaping up to be not only a slow week, but also likely a detrimental one – they’re worrying about staff commutes and a lack of reservations, and have even had to cancel events and make plans to close midweek.
At The Fly Trap, a legacy SoMa restaurant in the closure area, reservations are down and locals have made their plans abundantly clear.
“Regulars from our neighborhood have already said that they are leaving town entirely to avoid the conference,” general manager Jamee Stahl told SFGATE. “We have some large parties that have reserved tables that I expect are from the conference, and we’re hoping that being inside the security zone will encourage attendees to visit us.”
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That’s not the case at Benu, a three Michelin-starred restaurant that opened in 2010 and is also inside the closure zone, at 22 Hawthorne St. “We have fewer reservations than we can ever remember since opening,” project director Jasmine Peterlin told SFGATE via email. Specifically, Peterlin and Junyoung Jeong, a Benu chef and the restaurant’s coordinator for APEC-related matters, estimate they’re down more than 50 percent.
An exterior view of Benu in downtown San Francisco.
Image via Yelp user Elaine H.“Obviously, our guests are concerned about access and traffic,” Peterlin wrote. She said everyone at Benu recognizes what an honor it is for the city to host a global event, but feel that the city’s organization and communication were not commensurate with the scale of the event. “There seems to be a misunderstanding of how businesses function and what we need,” she added.
Jeong further elaborated that “customer-facing businesses like restaurants that employ many people who can't work remotely need more time to plan” than the two weeks they were given.
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“The city is boasting how this will be a boon for local businesses bringing 20,000 people to San Francisco. That's less than a Warriors game,” he said. The negative impact on businesses, on the other hand, is significant. “For us, the potential added business that a mere 20,000 people spread throughout the city can bring can't possibly offset the added expense, loss of business from locals and overall headache of operating in an area with restricted access.”
Abaca, the modern Filipino restaurant in Fisherman's Wharf, has had to cancel an event and close its doors for two days due to low reservations the week of APEC.
Melissa De Mata/AbacaAbaca co-owners Francis and Dian Ang can relate. Their modern Filipino restaurant is all the way in Fisherman’s Wharf – nowhere near the closure zones – and yet they made the difficult decision to cancel a highly anticipated event this Wednesday. They’re also closing the restaurant completely that day, and on Thursday, too.
“We went into single-digit reservations when typically we’d have 100,” chef Francis Ang said. “We called everybody and told the staff to stay home.” Unless the trend reverses, Ang plans to operate with a skeleton crew of five compared to his usual 17. And it feels eerily familiar.
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“It’s like pandemic mode to survive,” he said. “What do we do to get the least amount of loss? How do we minimize that loss to keep us surviving the next few years?” One thing the Angs are doing is living by their motto of “familia'' by offering their San Francisco home to a sous chef who lives in the East Bay and was worried about his commute this week.
It’s a small gesture, but one that fosters goodwill during a difficult time. After a slow summer and an even slower pandemic bounce-back, Ang said San Francisco is still one of the most challenging places in the country to run a restaurant.
Aphotic is a Michelin-starred restaurant near Moscone Center, the hub of APEC activity. The restaurant reports its reservations are stable for the week of the summit.
Image via Yelp user Aubany G.Peter Hemsley is trying to be optimistic. The chef-owner of Aphotic, a Michelin-starred destination restaurant near Moscone Center, said he is really happy with the attention APEC is bringing to downtown San Francisco. Reservations are stable, he said, and challenges can be opportunities.
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“The more high-profile events we have, the more it gets the federal government into the city to see what’s going on here,” he said. “I don’t think this event will be the gamechanger for downtown’s future prosperity…But in the worst possible scenario, if it just goes OK I think that’s a win.”
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