La Cocina Municipal Marketplace is a spacious women-led multicultural food market opened by local nonprofit La Cocina in 2021. They work to foster connections and opportunities for working class food entrepreneurs that often face barriers to success; namely women, immigrants, and people of color. The result is a vibrant dining space with affordable and mouthwatering food including Nepalese dumplings, Salvadoran pupusas, Algerian couscous bowls, Mexican street-style tacos, and much more.
Food and drink vendors at La Cocina Municipal Marketplace
Here’s a quick rundown of the main food vendors that you’ll find on any given day at La Cocina Municipal Marketplace:
- Boug Cali (Creole bodega) by Chef Tiffany Carter. Menu items include gumbo, smoked sausage and jerk tacos.
- Estrellita’s Snacks (Salvadoran) by Chef Estrella Gonzalez. Menu items include pupusas, tamales, fried plantains, and agua fresca.
- Kayma (Algerian) by Chefs Wafa and Mounir Bahloul. Menu items include delicious soups, sandwiches, grilled chicken, and baklawa.
- Los Cilantros (Mexican) by Chef Dilsa Lugo. Menu items include tostadas, chiles rellenos, and enchiladas.
- Mi Morena (Mexican) by Chef Guadalupe Moreno. Menu items include handmade corn tortillas, stews, rice, and grilled meats.
- Teranga (Senegalese) by Chef Nafy Ba Flafley. Menu items include peanut and bean stews, muffallettas, fresh juices, and spice blends.
In addition to the aforementioned food vendors, the marketplace has a full bar and a cafe.
- Fluid Cooperative Cafe (Cafe and event space) by Shannon Amitin, Santana Tapia and JoJo Ty. This cafe is meant to foster an inclusive place for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming customers and staff. At the moment they serve both brewed and iced coffee options with multicultural influences and ingredients, such as a Japanese sweet cream cold brew and Calamansi-ade with Filipino lime.
- La Paloma (Bar) is La Cocina’s full bar centering women-owned distilleries and educational opportunities for aspiring bartenders. Happy hour is on weekdays from 4-6pm.
More about La Cocina Municipal Marketplace
The marketplace comes to us from local nonprofit La Cocina, which fosters access to the commercial kitchens and other industry opportunities that many food entrepreneurs are excluded from. As “the nation’s first women-led food hall,” they help working-class immigrant women to achieve their culinary aspirations while also creating a safe and accessible space for Tenderloin residents. The goal is to create a “transformational and replicable model for anti-gentrification and conscious, community-led development.”
La Cocina Municipal Marketplace was announced over 8 years ago as a spacious food market for the Tenderloin. Construction had nearly finished on the 7,000 square foot space when the pandemic struck, so after another year of delay, the marketplace finally opened in April 2021. Since then it’s grown into a massively popular food market in the neighborhood.
La Cocina Municipal Marketplace is open for coffee and breakfast bites from 8am-2:30pm, and lunch items 11am-2:30pm on weekdays. The accompanying Paloma Bar is open from 11am-8pm weekdays, with Happy Hour from 4-6pm. Find the marketplace at 101 Hyde Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.