Nopa, the bustling restaurant at the corner of Divisadero and Hayes in the Western Addition sub-neighborhood that came to be known as NoPa (north of Panhandle) two decades ago, is celebrating 20 years in business this week, and they had a big bash to mark the occasion on Thursday night.

It is hard to imagine the Divisadero corridor as it was in 2006, long before people were talking about its "Valencia-fication," seven years before Bi-Rite arrived, and back when it was only beginning to show signs of the neighborhood main drag it has become. Sure, Popeye's has been there the whole time, and 20 years ago you could already get good deep-dish pizza (Little Star, RIP) and seafood (Bar Crudo) there. But the stretch of Divis between Haight Street and Geary Boulevard was mostly known for autobody shops, gas stations, and the car wash where everyone brought their Burning Man RVs post-playa.

Nopa played a pivotal role in raising the profile of the area, which chef-owner Laurence Jossel called one of the "last affordable neighborhoods" in the city at the time the restaurant opened. And the restaurant helped usher in an era in which San Francisco's profile on the national food scene grew significantly — becoming a city where even neighborhood restaurants like Frances and Delfina were turning out world-class food, earning widespread attention, and in the case of Frances, a Michelin star.

Jossel and former business partners Jeff Hanak and Allyson Jossel (his ex-wife) had been on the hunt for a restaurant space in 2004, with the idea of opening an all-day restaurant.

"Allyson and I would sit across the street at the Beanbag Cafe, which is still there, drinking coffee, talking about all these spaces around town we'd looked at, and right across the street from us was a For Lease sign on an old laundromat, which was also prior to that was a bank," Jossel says. "We knew change-of-use permits were a big thing, but out of nowhere we thought, 'Wait a minute. Let's just be curious.'"

The partners then contacted the landlord, who also owned the Mission Street Denny's in SoMa, and they found out that the space could be used for a number of things including a restaurant, without a change-of-use. After a meeting over Grand Slam breakfasts, the landlord gave the trio a great deal on the space with a handshake, and after an extensive buildout, Nopa was born.

Jossel still laments the "tiny kitchen" that they designed, which has remained unchanged, but, he says, "I wanted a rotisserie, I wanted a fryer, I wanted a smoker, and a wood grill, and I kinda got everything I wanted."

"I think I wrote the menu two days before we opened," he says. Staple dishes like the country pork chop and the house-ground burger have been hits since the restaurant's earliest days. And it's been an expensive burger from the beginning — Jossel believes it was priced at $18 back in 2006, which was pricy back then, and it's now a $29 burger, with high-quality beef, he says, being more expensive than it's ever been.

Nopa was known from the beginning for being a place you could go and have a burger and a cocktail even if it was after midnight — something uncommon in sleepy San Francisco, and even less common now.

"We kept on running into people in the industry who lived in that neighborhood, and we thought, 'Wait a minute, if we can't do breakfast and lunch, late night makes sense in that space.'"

For the first 14 years of Nopa's existence, its kitchen was open until 1 am seven nights a week, turning it into a nototious industry hangout for folks getting off their shifts at other restuarants with saner hours.

"It took a toll on the staff," Jossel says. "We couldn't just keep having people clocking off at 3 or 4 in the morning all the time."

Similarly, brunch, which was a wildly popular thing at Nopa up until the pandemic, has become a less feasible thing to pull off, staffing wise — though Jossel and his wife and current business partner Holly Rhodes have discussed possibly, down the line, sacrificing Sunday night dinner service to make brunch work again.

"Brunch is a labor in itself," Jossel says, noting that they always made their own bread for the French toast, and made their own bagels, etc. "It just asks a lot of the team. Getting people to eat brunch? No problem. Getting people to work it and have a good attitude about it? That's a problem."

The ownership of the restaurant changed after the pandemic hit, with Jossel deciding to buy out his former partners and keep the place going, for the sake of the neighborhood and his employees. And after a year of doing takeout and adding a parklet like everyone else, Nopa has chugged right along, and there's a line just about every night before the doors open at 5:30 to snag a bar seat or a spot at the communal table.

When asked about the secret to Nopa's success and longevity, Jossel says, hands down, it's consistency.

"Every single day we taste every single dish as a team, in the kitchen, and then as a team in the dining room. And if that pork chop doesn't taste exactly as it did 19 years ago, something's wrong," Jossel says. "If you want people to come back again and again and again, I think consistency is a big factor in that."

Jossel also points to the menu, with new dishes appearing nightly since the restaurant's earliest days, driven by his thousands of shopping trips to farmers' markets and a commitment to serving seasonal, organic ingredients whenever possible.

The pandemic also added a new staple dish to the menu, the Morroccan-spiced Yaya's Fried Chicken.

After expanding with Nopa Fish at the Ferry Building last year, the next big project for the Nopa team is a farm that will produce ingredients exclusively for the restaurant, on a property that Jossel has acquired in Sebastopol. But, he says, there will be a big learning curve.

"It's a lot harder than I thought it would be," Jossel says. "I never took for granted that farmers were brave and smart. But, man, it is a ton of work to put food in the ground and harvest it and clean it and get it to its perfect ripeness and grow it properly."

Jossel says that about a half-acre of land will hopefully begin producing lettuces, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, and more for the restaurant in the coming year or two, which he hopes will "push the menu forward."

When it comes to reaching the 20-year mark, Jossel also points to the boon of being centrally located and becoming a go-to dinner spot for hundreds if not thousands of neighbors.

"I would guesstimate that maybe 60 percent of our guests each night are return guests from the neighborhood," he says. "You just become part of their routine, and that's great."

Nopa - 560 Divisadero Street - Open Mon-Thur 5:30 to 10 pm, Fri-Sat 5:30 to 11 pm, and Sunday 5:30 to 9:30 pm - Reservations