If you have walked the 2200 block of Fillmore in the last month, you have seen scaffolding at Pine, plywood at Clay, and a stretch of paper-covered windows where familiar signage used to be. If you have walked it in the last week, you have also seen new awnings, fresh paint, and lights back on in storefronts that were dark for a year. The corridor is doing two things at once, and both are happening on the same six blocks.
The thesis of this post is simple. The Upper Fillmore you will walk this fall is not the one you walked last summer, and the reason is not one project. It is two forces running in parallel: a single investor's slow reshaping of the 2200 block, and a quieter refresh from independent owners on the same stretch who decided to renovate anyway. Everything else follows from that.
The corner at Fillmore and Pine finally has a tenant
For nearly two years, 2001 Fillmore sat behind paper. It had been Pacific Heights Bar & Grill, then Thai Stick, then Noosh, then nothing. In early February, that changed. A new Korean barbecue spot called Monami, from the chef behind Michelin-starred SSAL, is heading to the former Noosh space on upper Fillmore in Fall 2026, and the space had sat closed for nearly two years.
The chef is Junsoo Bae, who runs SSAL on upper Polk with Hyunyoung Bae. Bae told the Chronicle he wants Monami to be "a Korean barbecue version of House of Prime Rib." That is a specific reference point for a specific kind of restaurant, and it tells you what the corner is aiming to be: a room people book weeks out for anniversaries, not a walk-in weeknight place.
The build-out is not painless for the neighbors upstairs. According to a letter from JJD Property Management, aside from considerable noise, work will also be required on the second floor and roof, including the replacement of the roof in its entirety. If you live within a block, expect construction sound through late summer.
The Clay has a date, sort of
The other corner story on Fillmore is the Clay. If you have driven past the marquee at 2261 Fillmore any time since 2020, you have seen it dark. That is finally changing.
A plan to revive the Clay Theater as a single-screen neighborhood theater passed its first test before city authorities with flying colors, and the Historic Preservation Commission on April 1 unanimously endorsed plans to restore historic elements of the Clay while bringing it into the modern age.
Here is what the new Clay will actually be:
| Feature | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Seats | 380 | ~200 |
| Screenings per year | 0 since 2020 | 500+ planned |
| Projection | 35mm | 35mm and 4K digital |
| Ground floor use | Lobby only | Lobby cafe with bookstore |
| Programming | First-run | First-run, repertory, talks, live events |
Crews plan to cut seating from 380 to about 200 for a more comfortable viewing experience, add modern sound systems, wheelchair access, and improved fire safety features, with new equipment supporting both 35mm films and 4K digital movies, and the theater expects to host over 500 events each year.
When you will actually be able to buy a ticket is the question everyone in the neighborhood is asking. Commissioner Robert Vergara had only one question at the hearing: "When?" Project director Cody Allen responded that his team would seek building permits soon and hoped to be finished "in early '27." Read that carefully. Building permits soon, not now. If you are planning to walk to a movie at the Clay, plan for 2027.
The programming lead is worth knowing by name if you care about what plays there. Ted Gerike founded the acclaimed Los Angeles cinema-bookstore hybrid Now Instant and has led digital content for New York's Metrograph cinema since 2021. Metrograph is the closest thing New York has to what a single-screen Clay could become. That is the reference point, not the old Landmark days.
The refresh nobody talks about
Here is the part of the Upper Fillmore story that gets lost in every article about Neil Mehta and the UFRP. The 2200 block is being renovated by people who have nothing to do with him.
A number of other renovations not part of Mehta's project are also under way on the 2200 block: Miette patisserie is opening soon; Palmer's is close to reopening; Athleta and Veronica Beard are completely remodeling; and a new shop, said to be a spinoff from the Marine Layer clothing brand, is in the works.
That matters because it changes the read on the block. If you had told a resident in September 2024 that Ten-Ichi, Noosh, Starbucks, and Alice & Olivia would all be closed within a year, they would have called it a corridor collapse. The specific closures did happen. In September 2024, Ten-Ichi, a family owned and operated Japanese restaurant on Fillmore Street since 1978, closed; in June 2024 Noosh shut down; in December 2024 a Starbucks that had been open since the early 1990s and the Alice & Olivia boutique closed.
What did not happen is what looks obvious in retrospect. The block did not empty out. Independent operators kept signing leases, and legacy tenants stayed. La Méditerranée and the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project agreed to a multi-year lease extension on the restaurant's Fillmore Street location, through the summer of 2028. A 45-year restaurant that briefly looked like it might leave is now on the block through the end of the decade.
The side-street openings you might have missed
While Fillmore itself was under construction, the openings that actually happened this year are one block off it.
The old Ella's space at California and Presidio has a new tenant with a familiar team. Maria Isabel took the old Ella's space. The Noosh chefs made a triumphant return to the neighborhood with Maria Isabel in the old Ella's space at California and Presidio, the same team that ended up at Dalida in the Presidio after the Noosh split, now back within walking distance of the corner where the story started. Laura and Sayat Ozylimaz are back on the same corner they were pushed off two years ago, a block away and under their own name.
Two blocks east, the tiny former sushi bar at 2417 California became something new. DON DON is open. The tiny former sushi bar BUBU at 2417 California Street, near Fillmore, has a new name, DON DON, and a new purpose. Owner Kevin Chen says the original BUBU space was simply too small to hold enough tables, so he moved BUBU to join forces with the NONO space at Fillmore and Sutter, combining the two restaurants under one roof. The original BUBU is now DON DON, a takeout-friendly spot stocked with ready-to-go sushi made fresh throughout the day, and there are also appetizers and made-to-order items, including ramen, udon, Japanese-style sandos and more.
If you were used to grabbing a quick sushi lunch on California, the muscle memory has to update. BUBU is not gone. It moved to Fillmore and Sutter and now shares a kitchen with NONO. The California Street address is a grab-and-go counter.
The weekend that answered the question
Every summer since 1986, the first weekend of July has been the Fillmore Jazz Festival. In 2025, it almost was not. In 2026, it came back bigger than before.
After briefly facing cancellation in 2025 over a funding shortfall, the annual Fillmore Jazz Festival returned this weekend with two days of free live performances, food vendors, and merchants along Fillmore Street for its 4th of July tradition dating back to 1986; the festival had been briefly canceled in 2025 after organizers faced a roughly $400,000 funding gap for annual operating costs, but it was revived days later with support from crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and his nonprofit Avenue Greenlight, along with additional community sponsors.
New for 2026, the festival added three main stages and featured performances by 25+ local and nationally renowned artists across multiple music venues, and stages this year were named in honor of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Tony Bennett, and Johnny Mathis.
If you were on Fillmore that weekend, you already know what that felt like. If you missed it, the practical takeaway is that the festival is now on stable footing for the first time in two years, which means the July weekend crowd is a reliable annual event again.
What to actually do with this if you live here
A short cheat sheet, block by block:
- For a proper dinner out: Maria Isabel on California, or hold your Fall 2026 reservations for Monami at Fillmore and Pine
- For a quick lunch: DON DON at 2417 California for takeout sushi, or the BUBU/NONO combined space at Fillmore and Sutter for sit-down
- For a walk with visitors this fall: The 2200 block, once Miette and Palmer's are back and the Marine Layer spinoff is open
- For a movie: Not the Clay, not yet. Plan for 2027
- For the corridor's calendar anchor: The first weekend of July, three stages, no ticket
The through-line
If you already own on Sacramento, California, Clay, Washington, or one of the streets that feeds into Fillmore, the corridor around you is being rewritten in a way that most residents will not fully register until Fall 2026 rolls into 2027. The Clay is not a rumor anymore. Monami is a signed tenant. Maria Isabel is serving dinner tonight. The Jazz Festival kept its date on the calendar.
The specific mix of what fills the remaining vacancies will decide whether the block feels like the Fillmore of ten years ago, a curated version of it, or something new. What is already clear is that the corridor did not empty out the way the 2024 closures suggested it might. It got quieter, then it got busier, and the busy version is what you will walk this fall.
If you are thinking about what any of this means for a home you own nearby, or for one you are considering, I would rather talk about the specific block than about the corridor in general. Every street off Fillmore reads differently right now, and the differences are the point. Regina Gaspari — Let's Connect.
