One of SF’s busiest walk-in restaurants going back to reservations

As Anthony Bourdain once said, North Beach’s legendary Comstock Saloon may serve craft cocktails, but it’s still a “a no-nonsense, old school bar.” But when the going gets tough, even old-school bars have to embrace technology sometimes. That’s why for the first time since before the pandemic, the historically popular bar and restaurant is looking into taking online reservations again. 

“I love walk-in business but there is just not enough of it these days to sustain our biz and we need some help,” read a post from the bar on Instagram on Wednesday asking restaurant industry professionals for their reservation service recommendations. “… We need to fill this place during dinner hours!”

After a nearly two-year closure during the pandemic, co-owner Jonny Raglin told SFGATE that he’s been taking things slowly with ramping up business, relying on the support of old regulars, tourism and people stumbling upon the bar on Columbus Avenue. Comstock Saloon has been taking phone and email reservations, but no OpenTable (which is what it used pre-pandemic). This approach has had mixed success, he said.

“Business is just all over the place right now,” Raglin said. “We really don’t know what to expect on any given night how busy we’re going to be. And so that’s kind of the intention with going back to a reservation platform, is so we can hopefully start to develop some more predictable business days.”

He said that a challenge they face is that most people know the 116-year-old San Francisco institution as a cocktail bar, and not a restaurant — so dinner can be slow. It’s also been slower than usual recently. 

“For instance, last September was a record month for us in sales, and that record held all the way through the holiday season,” Raglin said. “… Unfortunately that did not happen this year. I just got my PNL [profit and loss statement] from our accounting firm, and the news wasn’t good.”

Raglin is unsure what is causing the fluctuations in business, but he’s noticed other restaurants in San Francisco struggling with the same issue. Nearby North Beach Restaurant recently cited a “terrible” summer as one of the reasons for its impeding closure after 53 years.

“It seems like we’re kind of crawling our way up from the middle, which is a strange position to be,” he said. “In the past, you had restaurants that were impossible to get into, then you had your mid-strata restaurants that were busy but not impossible, then your folks struggling to get up into the middle. And right now, it seems like we’re struggling from the middle.”

That said, Raglin said fans of the historic bar don’t need to worry about it closing — they are doing their best to weather the storm. 

“What I would say is fans of great places in San Francisco … just don’t take them for granted,” he said. “We’re all in a tinderbox.”