One of the city's only 24-hour diners, Sparky's on Church Street, was suddenly closed last week and remains closed as of this morning. BrokeAss Stuart got the news via a tipster, and SFist confirmed that no one is answering the phone as of Tuesday. No update has been posted on the restaurant's website,
A woman working in the jewelry store next door assumed this could be another temporary shutdown by the health department, and that theory is confirmed by one of those health code alerts on Yelp, saying that a recent inspection put Sparky's in the "bottom 5% locally." The department has shut down multiple restaurants just a block up Market from here in the last year, several of which have reopened under different names.
But there's also a rumor about Sparky's that the restaurant has been struggling to make its rent every month, which is reportedly $30,000.
Given how busy this place was the last time I was in, eating something greasy and cheesy late on a Friday night several weeks ago, this would seem odd assuming there are 75 seats in there, and a modest two turns a day at $20 a person, the restaurant would gross $90,000 a month. [Update: A restaurant industry source tells me that would be an exorbitantly high rent for this space, and if they were grossing in the neighborhood of $90K/mo, that would be "death." Also, there's now a notice on the door that the restaurant failed to pay their February rent.]
We'll wait and see if the place magically reopens and they would typically have to disclose, via a public notice on the window, that they were shut down by a health inspector.
In the meantime, we are down one late-night food option, everyone though some recent reviews on Yelp, including one just yesterday, suggest the food had recently gone steeply downhill. My recent experience, while it featured some jalapeno poppers that came straight from a Sysco freezer, was nonetheless passable, and I survived.
Please refer to this list for other places where you might be able to eat some drunk food in a pinch.
Related: Yelp Now Explicitly Warning You Off Restaurants With Poor Health Scores
The Best Post-Midnight, Late-Night Eats In San Francisco
