Ivonne Cruz serves a guest at Los Cilantros inside La Cocina Municipal Marketplace. With the closing of the food hall, the restaurant is relocating to Berkeley.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
When ambitious San Francisco food hall La Cocina Municipal Marketplace closes its kiosks to the public on Friday, where will its women and immigrant food entrepreneurs go next — and how will the celebrated nonprofit move forward with its city-leased space in the Tenderloin?
One person asking is Tiffany Carter. She started her Louisiana-meets-California soul food business, Boug Cali, by selling rich gumbo and po’boy sandwiches at her uncle’s church in the Bayview. As part of La Cocina’s incubator program, Carter got the chance to run her own subsidized restaurant kiosk as one of six original vendors at the marketplace, which opened in April 2021 in a disused post office building at 101 Hyde St.
But at a meeting in July, everything changed. La Cocina told Carter and her fellow vendors that the nonprofit would soon convert the food hall to commercial kitchen space, like at its original Mission District facility. Only the front coffee bar would continue to serve walk-in customers, featuring one La Cocina pop-up at a time.
Comments are closed.