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Eater
04-08-2025
- Business
- Eater
Why San Francisco's Go-To Spot for Matcha Is A Bookstore by the Beach
It's Monday at one p.m. and the bookstore near Ocean Beach is booming with customers. There are elderly folk working through black coffee in the 'analog space,' a four-top table by the window. But it's the menu at the bookstore's cafe that gets all the attention. Local hitmakers Loquat, Little Bee Bakery, Dynamo Donut, and Florecita Panaderia all grace the pastry case. It's Rocky's Matcha — the only place in the city to serve the SoCal-made green tea purveyor — that earned the business a huge fanbase, though. The contrast from summer 2025 to 2022 when Blackbird moved to Irving Street is stark. Each weekend, there are long lines heading up Irving Street. More and more, a miasma of people swamp between Hook Fish Co. and Blackbird, bumping across the road. It's almost a testament to how popular this stretch of the neighborhood is these days. There's a yoga studio full of people, also in the middle of Garfield's least favorite seventh of the week. Another tipping point: the official christening of the Great Highway as Sunset Dunes in April 2025. Owner Kathryn Graham is thoughtful and slow-going in her speaking. She says the first thing that let her know her cafe was getting traction was the olive oil spelt cake. The subtle pastry blew up on TikTok. Her friends and staff let her know. Then, the matcha hive showed up. Rocky's has more than 20,000 followers on TikTok, ground zero for the finely milled green tea powder's upsurge in attention. Blackbird's cafe manager had a run-in with the Rocky's team. That fateful encounter led to Blackbird as the sole outpost for Rocky's tea. Repeat customers now come every week for the tough-to-find Los Angeles matcha. Some trek from Potrero Hill and Bayshore to get a taste of that ceremonial grade good good. 'Rocky just connected with us on this vibe level,' Graham says. 'And we thought his matcha was so amazing. We did not realize he had this massive TikTok following and that those people would find us.' Lauren Hanussak The explosion in this Sunset shop's popularity overlaps with matcha's second great global renaissance in the 21st century. In San Francisco, that looks a lot like SoMa specialty cafe Telescope Coffee launching its own tinned ceremonial matcha. It looks a lot like Cafe Shoji's matcha einspänners spawning 40-minute waits. Unfortunately, it also looks like a global shortage is driving prices up for local players, including Le Dix-Sept. Per a report from Mizuba Tea, an importer with 12 years of buying from Japan, this shortage is a 'historic moment' that has seen the country go from a two percent slice of total tea export to a boom crop, causing field turnover as everyone scrambles to keep up. Lauren Hanussak Graham, with none of that on her radar, opened the original Blackbird on Judah Street in 2017, sans cafe attachment. She used to live in New York, where she worked with a group of activists to open the bookstore Blue Stockings. After the first election of Donald Trump, she wanted to work on a project like that again, a place for her two young kids and the Outer Sunset broadly. Three Fish Studio left its Irving Street location in 2022, and they reached out to Graham when they decamped. It was twice the size of her shop, and boasted a massive backyard space. It was during that jump that she linked with the team at Four Barrel. There was no Day Moon bakery and cafe at that point, and Trouble Coffee's future was up in the air. She decided to turn part of her new shop into a cafe. In short order, people were coming and spending their whole days hanging out at Blackbird. There is a popular events arm in the space, too, harkening back to those Blue Stockings days. Open mic nights with more than 50 people, pop-ups including Malaysian pastry pop-up Batik and Baker, and children's reading hours are on almost every day. Now with the advent of Sunset Dunes, this airy space full of books and caffeine gets more and more popular all the time. 'I create space, and people fill it,' Graham says. 'What makes it work here is very little to do with me.' Lauren Hanussak Eater SF All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
San Francisco Chronicle
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tucked away in the Bay Area redwoods, this cafe feels like summer camp
Surrounded by towering redwoods, Lightwave Coffee & Kitchen feels like an idyllic summer camp getaway, located next to a skatepark near a Russian River beach. The eclectic cafe has a maximalist attitude built on a passion for thrifting, as evidenced by two antique televisions, a horse bust, several vintage phones and a shelf lined with a half dozen cassette players. Married couple Gal and Ori Ginzburg opened it in the Sonoma County community of Monte Rio in 2018, bringing something that's in short supply in the forested area between Guerneville and Jenner: a quality restaurant and specialty coffee shop. The food leans on Levantine, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Moroccan flavors, with one standout dish that I'm dubbing the Bay Area food of the summer: a gussied-up pita designed to be enjoyed beachside as the sun warms your river-chilled skin. The appropriately called beach pita ($17) is modeled after the Iraqi-Israeli sandwich named sabich. Loquat in San Francisco makes my go-to sabich, but it's only available once a month and you'll undoubtedly encounter a line (sorry). Lightwave, on the other hand, offers its excellent pita year-round in a tranquil environment with none of the city's face-paced urbanism. Encased in a plush pita is a festival of ingredients: creamy, pulpy roasted eggplants; boiled eggs with bright yolks; and peppery arugula, sluiced with glorious condiments like spiced, pickled mango amba; herbaceous, verdant Yemeni-style zhoug; and briny, luminous preserved lemons. You might eat it at the charming cafe, but I emphatically believe it tastes best at the beach. As the sandwich sits, its flavors bind and concentrate. The longer it rests, the deeper its splendor becomes. It makes for an invincible post-swim meal at the Russian River. For plated dishes, however, I encourage you to dine at Lightwave, which has a lovely porch with an abundance of outdoor seating. There are picnic tables on the grass and plenty more on the wooden deck, some beneath an awning and one under a Victorian-style metal gazebo. Plus, the couple's dishware collection would make any grandma envious. Try the bourekas ($18), flaky handpies stuffed with tangy cheese and spinach, or the umami-ladden shakshuka ($18), poached eggs over stewed tomatoes accompanied by piquant zhoug, pita and salad. The latter is inspired by Gal's Moroccan grandmother, and it's the standout brunch choice. Don't miss the fantastic cream pies, a weekend-only offering with flavors ranging from lemon to chocolate peanut butter and sesame-rich halva mousse. On a recent outing, I was beguiled by the lemon blueberry combination, which was light and not-too-sweet. Skip the drip coffee in favor of a cortado ($5) served in a tea cup, or, better yet, order a refreshing mint-lemon slushy ($7). After operating for almost seven years, Lightwave has become a local landmark. Before moving to Sonoma for farm work, Ori worked at coffee shops and restaurants, as did Gal, who also worked at a bakery. While the area is marked by a sense of calmness, the pair has faced calamity with floods in 2019 and fires in 2022, to say nothing of the pandemic. Still, the couple has managed to grow the team to a staff of six. Ori is working on finding a place for a dinner concept nearby, dubbed Nightwave, but it's still top secret. They live up the street with their daughter, but Ori still has an ingrained sense of 'urbanism.' He's restless. He loves working. He wants to change that with the next generation: 'I hope my daughter will be like a nature hippie girl that grows in the trees and walks barefoot.'
