A new French café and bakery has taken over a long-vacant storefront behind the Opera Plaza theater on Van Ness Avenue, serving up fresh pastries, a Wagyu Roquefort burger and Illy coffee to a neighborhood that has seen plenty of its retail space sit empty. Maison Bohème opened its doors on October 28, settling into 601 Van Ness Avenue in the spot once occupied by Leonore's Deli & Taqueria.
The café is the latest project from Stella Roller, who co-owns San Francisco's Boho restaurant family and launched the original Boho Petite patisserie on Chestnut Street in the Marina back in November 2022, according to Beyond Chron. That first Boho Petite location, at 2146 Chestnut Street, made its name serving traditional French viennoiserie, artisanal pastries and savory options, and the Boho family brought on chef Clément Digani as its French pastry chef, as reported by The San Francisco Standard. Roller opened a second Boho Petite outpost at Four Embarcadero Center in August 2025, per Beyond Chron, and that Embarcadero location — described elsewhere as a French patisserie serving cakes, custom cakes, lunch options and coffee beverages — brings in goods daily from the Chestnut Street kitchen, according to whatnow.com, which also names Roller as the concept's general manager.
Maison Bohème marks something bigger for Roller: a flagship café built around a larger kitchen she spent six months searching the city to find, Beyond Chron reports. She said the Opera Plaza space matched her vision for both the kitchen and the café itself, and she agreed to lease it without first checking the rent, according to the same account.
What's On the Menu and What's Next
The new café serves freshly baked pastries, artisan desserts, breakfast and lunch, the Wagyu Roquefort burger, and Illy coffee, operating daily from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., per Beyond Chron's reporting. Roller has applied for a wine permit and is gauging community interest in dinner service aimed at opera and symphony attendees, the outlet notes, and she plans to introduce high tea service on November 15.
Jackie, who owns Opera Plaza Hair Design across the hall from the new café, told Beyond Chron that it's convenient and the food is wonderful, adding that it beats her usual trips to Hayes Valley spots.
A Commercial Corridor Still Searching for Its Footing
Maison Bohème's arrival lands on a stretch of Van Ness that has struggled with empty storefronts for years. San Francisco's Planning Department surveys found a 53% ground-floor commercial vacancy rate on the corridor, compared with 7.7% citywide and 22% in Union Square, according to SFist. A separate measure cited by Avison Young senior vice president Cameron Baird put Van Ness commercial vacancy at 35%, or roughly 250,000 square feet of empty space, with eight vacant sites larger than 10,000 square feet, as reported by ABC7 News. The two figures measure different things — overall commercial space versus ground-floor storefronts — and it's not clear from available reporting whether they were taken using the same methodology or timeframe.
There are signs of movement elsewhere in the city's retail market. ABC7 News reports that two AI-related companies recently leased a combined 43,000 square feet at Levi's Plaza and Waterfront Plaza. Citywide, though, the picture remains uneven: San Francisco's retail vacancy rate stood at 6.6% in Q3 2026, down slightly from 6.7% a year earlier, while net absorption was negative 59,582 square feet for the quarter and negative 92,420 square feet year to date, according to a Kidder Mathews market report. Average asking rents citywide reached $36.56 per square foot annually, up nearly 10% year over year, and the average retail sale price climbed to $571 per square foot, with the quarter's largest sale — 146 Geary Street in Union Square — closing at $20.5 million, per the same report.
Against that backdrop, a flagship French café choosing to plant itself on Van Ness stands out. For Roller and her Boho Petite team, it's the culmination of a long search for the right kitchen — and for neighbors like Jackie, it's simply a welcome new option across the hall.
