Haight Retro Diner Breakfast Before 2 pm: Pork Store Cafe

Pork Store Cafe is a narrow breakfast diner at 1451 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, a block from the Haight and Ashbury intersection. Its official site lists hours of 8 am to 2 pm Monday through Friday and 8 am to 3 pm on Saturday and Sunday. The kitchen serves breakfast and lunch only, so this is a morning retro diner rather than a late-night one.

The cafe's own site calls it San Francisco's original breakfast spot since 1916, a date that goes back to the business's roots as a pork shop rather than to this dining room. The magazine 7x7 dates the Haight Street location to 1979 and argues that, of the two Pork Store Cafes the city has had, only this one rises to true diner status.

That is the right way to think about it. The room is small and eclectic, with Haight-Ashbury posters papering the walls, stained-glass windows and a long counter that faces the kitchen. The neighborhood around it has changed many times since the Summer of Love, but a counter stool here still puts you in front of the flat-top griddle and the cooks working it.

Time Out's advice is to take a counter seat for a view of the spatula work on the griddle, and regulars agree. The counter turns over faster than the handful of tables, and it is the easiest seat for one or two people. From there you see every order of hash browns pressed flat and crisped, which is half the show at an old-school diner.

One house rule matters on busy mornings. A Google review quoted on the official site notes that the staff prefer the whole party to be present before seating anyone, so do not send one friend ahead to hold a table. Arrive together, put your name in, and wait on the sidewalk under the stained glass.

The dish Time Out singles out is Eggs in a Tasty Nest, two over-easy eggs set on a heap of hash browns with bacon, bell peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic and cheddar. It is the order that explains the restaurant's reputation for huge portions. Biscuits and gravy, with a vegetarian gravy option, and patty melts appear in 7x7's write-up, and pork chops and chicken fried steak show up on the breakfast menu according to customer reviews on the official site.

Another review on the site praises the breakfast burrito for its heat and flavor and notes that the server happily split it in two for a couple. That is a useful tip. Portions are large enough that two people can share a burrito or a Tasty Nest and add a side of biscuits, rather than ordering two full plates and leaving half behind.

Here is the honest call. This is a griddle kitchen, not a brunch restaurant with pastry ambitions, so skip anything delicate and stick to eggs, hash browns, burritos and gravy. Coffee is diner coffee. If you want a latte, buy it at a cafe down the street after breakfast, then walk it off in the park. Budget time as well as money, because nobody rushes you off a stool here, and a plate this size takes a while to finish.

Lines form outside on weekend mornings, and one reviewer on the official site admits the queue out the door was part of the appeal. The shortest waits are right at the 8 am opening or after 1 pm on weekdays, when the brunch crowd thins. Because the kitchen closes at 2 pm on weekdays, do not leave a weekday visit too late.

If the weekend wait passes 30 minutes, Golden Gate Park's Panhandle and the Stanyan Street entrance to the park are a short walk west, and a loop there passes the time better than the sidewalk. Weekday visitors can usually walk straight in, and solo diners almost always find a stool within a few minutes.

Pork Store Cafe sits in the middle of the Haight-Ashbury shopping strip. Amoeba Music, the giant record store in a former bowling alley, is a few blocks west near Stanyan Street, and vintage clothing shops line both sides of Haight Street toward Masonic Avenue. The famous street-sign corner of Haight and Ashbury is about half a block west, the obvious photo before or after breakfast. A short detour up Ashbury Street passes the Victorian that the Grateful Dead shared in the late 1960s, one of the most photographed houses in the neighborhood, so keep your voice down, since people still live there.

From the cafe, walk west on Haight Street into Golden Gate Park and follow the paths to Hippie Hill, where drum circles gather on sunny weekends. Buena Vista Park, the city's oldest official park, rises to the south off Haight Street and gives a steep climb with views over the city, a good way to work off a plate of biscuits and gravy.

Muni's 7-Haight/Noriega and 33-Ashbury/18th bus lines stop near the cafe, and the N-Judah light rail runs along Carl Street a short walk to the south. Street parking on Haight Street is metered and hard to find on weekends, so public transit or a bike is the easier choice. The cafe sits on the block of Haight Street between Masonic Avenue and Ashbury Street, so the Haight and Ashbury street signs are the landmark to aim for when you step off the bus.

Pork Store Cafe is at 1451 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, in Haight-Ashbury. Official hours are 8 am to 2 pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 8 am to 3 pm on Saturday and Sunday. The cafe serves breakfast and lunch only. Bring your whole party before asking for a table, and take a counter seat if you are dining alone.