Bluestem Restaurant & Market, formerly Bluestem Brasserie, is closing this month after 11 years in downtown San Francisco.
Co-owners Stacy and Adam Jed made an announcement on social media Tuesday night, though their post doesn’t explain the reasons for the closure. Adam Jed declined to comment further.
Bluestem’s last day at One Yerba Buena Lane will be Saturday, Dec. 24.
“It has truly been an honor to create a space where people take respite amidst busy work days and gather to celebrate life’s special moments, where regulars choose to linger after their meal and soak in the comforts of our familial space,” they wrote. “Those snapshots help keep our hearts full as we say farewell to a restaurant that became our second home, that we perhaps know better than ourselves.”
The closure comes a year after Bluestem retooled in response to the pandemic. The restaurant reopened last November with a new name, retail market and more casual service model, including grab-and-go options. In an Eater article at the time, the owners said they believed downtown San Francisco’s recovery had reached a hopeful “turning point.”
Yet businesses in the area have continued to struggle, including Italian restaurant Zero Zero, which closed in November. Office workers and tourists, who once sustained the neighborhoods’ businesses, have not returned in pre-pandemic numbers.
The Jeds opened Bluestem in 2011. The restaurant became known for comfort food, cocktails and its famed, rum-soaked “Honolulu Hangover Cake,” now made by Lori Baker, the pastry chef who owned San Francisco’s Baker & Banker with her husband and former Bluestem chef Jeffrey Banker.
Elena Kadvany (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ekadvany