Causwells is turning its Marina annex into an all-martini bar. Starting tomorrow, the space at 2336 Chestnut St. becomes the Causwells Martini Room, a pop-up built entirely around San Francisco's classic cocktail, backed by a short menu of mozzarella sticks, a mortadella sandwich, and a towering devil's food cake.
As reported by The San Francisco Standard, the project comes from beverage director Elmer Mejicanos, who runs the pop-up with business partner and chef Adam Rosenblum. Mejicanos told the Standard he calls the tiny bar "a martini church," and the drink list backs up the name: three categories — dry, bright and juicy, and savory — each with three martini options, plus a build-your-own route where drinkers choose their vodka or gin, vermouth, bitters, and garnish.
A Decade of Burgers, Then a Revolving Annex
Causwells has anchored that stretch of Chestnut Street for more than a decade, opening in July 2014 under Rosenblum and then-partner Tom Patella and building a following around its double-smash Americana cheeseburger, according to Time Out. The annex next door, by contrast, has rarely sat still.
That 400-square-foot space opened as Lilah in October 2024, a low-proof cocktail bar built around Japanese kakigori shaved-ice drinks and named for Mejicanos's daughter, Delilah, as Hoodline's coverage of Lilah's debut detailed. Lilah later gave way to Super Mensch, an East Coast-style Jewish deli and cocktail bar known for matzo ball soup margaritas and house-cured pastrami, launched once the team secured a full liquor license, per Tablehopper. Super Mensch closed this May, clearing the annex for its newest identity.
The team has been here before with a dedicated martini concept, too. In April, Causwells opened a second, larger location at the Springline development in Menlo Park featuring an expanded food menu and a mobile tableside martini cart, according to 7x7, a rollout Hoodline covered in its Menlo Park martini cart debut story.
Dry, Bright, and Savory, by the Glass
Among the dry offerings is the Filthy Martini, made with olive vermouth and smoked queen olives, while the bright-and-juicy side includes a Lychee Martini and a Vesper. The Clarified Cosmo, built from orange-leaf-infused vodka, French orange liqueur, and organic white cranberry juice, is finished with a pectin-treated mandarin orange garnish; Mejicanos told the Standard it tastes like a cosmo but looks like a gibson.
The house Causwells Martini leans hardest into the theme, mixing gin with eucalyptus bitters and white-peach balsamic vinegar in a nod to Prohibition-era moonshine, and arriving at the table in a mini bathtub. Garnish options across the menu include lemon peel, pickled pearl onions, and blue-cheese-stuffed olives, and the bar also stocks half a dozen beers and a handful of wines for anyone skipping the martinis.
Non-drinkers get their own lineup: three zero-proof cocktails, including a paloma made with house-distilled non-alcoholic tequila. Global sales of non-alcoholic beverages are projected to grow by $4 billion by 2028, according to Accio, a shift the zero-proof menu is clearly built to catch.
Sandwiches, Sticks, and a Cake for Thirty
Food stays intentionally narrow: a single appetizer, entree, and dessert. The appetizer is triple-breaded mozzarella sticks with a spicy tomato vodka cream sauce and ranch, while the mortadella sandwich stacks stracciatella, spicy Peppadew peppers, pistachio pesto, and four-year-old balsamic on a 48-hour mini focaccia that's cold-fermented for six hours and brushed with sesame seeds, per the Standard's report.
Dessert is a 10-layer devil's food cake, sold by the slice or as a whole cake that feeds up to 30 people, though whole cakes require ordering a few days ahead. Mejicanos told the Standard that two people can build a full dinner with the full menu and two to three martinis, and the room's décor plays along with artwork of booze-swilling animals — a frog, rabbit, cat, and fox — lining the walls.
San Francisco's Martini Moment
The debut lands amid a broader martini revival that San Francisco has officially embraced. San Francisco Travel launched the city's first "San Francisco Martini Trail" in October 2025 and expanded it to 25 venues this year to celebrate the city's ties to the cocktail, according to Forbes.
Cocktail historians trace the drink's roots to the 1860s Gold Rush era, crediting either bartender Jerry Thomas at San Francisco's old Occidental Hotel or a saloon in nearby Martinez, per Broke-Ass Stuart — the kind of lineage Mejicanos leans on when he frames the pop-up as a shrine to the drink. Savory, umami-rich cocktails are also among the fastest-growing categories in the industry right now, per EHL Insights, a trend the bar's brinier offerings tap directly into.
The Bartender Behind the Bar
Mejicanos brings a long résumé to the project. He spent 11 years running drink programs for restaurateur Tony Gemignani at Capo's and Tony's before co-founding North Beach tapas bar Red Window with Rosenblum in 2021, according to 7x7. Hoodline covered that North Beach tapas debut in 2021 and later chronicled his 30-Minute Soufflé cocktail, a labor-intensive gin-fizz riff that helped build his reputation for technique-heavy drinks at Causwells.
Hours Now, Questions After Thanksgiving
The Martini Room pours Tuesdays through Thursdays, while Causwells uses the same annex as a full-service overflow dining room Fridays through Mondays, per the Standard. Updates are posted on the pop-up's Instagram account, @causwells.martini.room.
Causwells plans to convert the space into its annual holiday pop-up bar at Thanksgiving, continuing the seasonal churn that has defined the annex since Lilah's debut. Given how well the martini cart has performed at the Menlo Park location, whether the Martini Room could stick around longer — or simply hand the space off to yet another concept — remains unresolved.
