The Dolores Park Cafe History
The Dolores Park location opened in 1997 by Rachel Herbert. Herbert had been working at one of Valencia street, Mission restaurants for five years, when she noticed the restaurant space at 18th and Dolores. At the time, Herbert lived just a few blocks away and remarked on how empty the neighborhood was, describing it as a “no man’s land between the Mission and Castro.”
“There was no Tartine, no Bi-Rite, no Delfina, nothing there,” Herbert said. “Just a really old, decaying vegetarian restaurant.”
Renovations took a year, and during that time, anticipation in the community grew. “At the end of the year, the neighborhood was super excited because they knew there was nothing [else] there,” said Herbert. “We had a line out the door from the first day, I was just really lucky.”
