When Sharon Lindley was a kid in Scotland, her uncleโthe first inย his family to immigrateโmoved to San Francisco and started bartending. โI used to get parcels from San Francisco,โ Lindley says, while sittingย out in front of Scullery, her new cafe in the Tenderloin neighborhood, on a milk crate covered with a slab of wood.
Some 26 years ago, Lindley followed in her uncleโs footsteps, moving from Hong Kong to San Franciscoโs Tenderloin with Jason, a Brit she had met previously. They lived in an apartment at 550 Larkin, just across the street from where Scullery now serves coffee on a quietly burgeoning block. Lindley walked to her job at OโFarrellโs Sports Bar, which they would later buy and then sell so they could open Olive, the first upscale cocktail bar in the area.
The Tenderloin, seedy and destitute as it can be, was their neighborhood: they ate there, they drank there, they opened bars there, they had two children there. The Tenderloin was/is their home, and Scullery feels like an extension of that:ย a place where Lindleyย serves coffee and Scottish delicacies to neighborhood locals whose names, occupations, and pets she rattles off effortlessly.
After years in the food industryโas a bartender, then an ownerโLindley felt drawn to the world of coffee. โWe saw all these Third Waveย coffee shopsโBlue Bottle, Sightglass, Four Barrelโand just thought it was an amazing niche,โ she says. โSoย we graduated from liquor to coffee.โ With Scullery, sheย wanted to emulate aย more European โgrab-and-goโ style of cafeย thatย sheย and her husband had grown up with. โYou drink your coffee and youโre out of it,โ sheย says.
The design of the space reflects this idea. The cafe is small, cozy even:ย a squarish shoebox taken up almost entirely by the coffee and kitchen area. Large windows pull sunlight into the seating area and the knickknacks are arrangedย artfully on shelves among plants and a variety of local food products. Customers sitย on canary-yellow metal stools, earbuds in place, fingers pressed to their phones.
And as much as it has that โnew San Francisco coffee shopโ feel, thereโs a depth to itโa sense of time and place that makes it feel different. The PG Tips teaโsort of theย official tea bag of the UKโand Welsh rarebit on the menu are part of this: Rarebit is a Scottish delicacy, an open-faced grilled cheese with a healthy dollop of chutney spread on top. โEverybody wants rabbit,โ sheย says. โWe donโt have rabbit, we have rarebit.โ The dish is a nod to herย Scottish upbringing. โItโs an essential, go-to supper in Scotland,โ she says, โIโd have this every night around 8 p.m., white bread with orange cheddar.โ
If the rarebit is an allusion to what came before, it also represents theย life Lindley and her family have made in the U.S. The chutney used is from the Tenderloin-based McQuadeโs Celtic Chutneyย andย the bread is from the Midwife and the Baker (a farmerโs market discovery). Atย Scullery, it seems that the past is wrapped in the present. Herย presence is etched intoย the space, her past and present ingrained into the rough wood counter and every beverage or snack that slides across it. Sheย seems to know everything about the cafeโsย regulars: who they are, what they do, and even theirย currentย relationship status.
Sculleryย chose to serve Sightglass coffee because Lindleyย and Jason were inspired by itsย story of starting with just a coffee cart. โThey were the right fit,โ she says, and in a place that feels as intimateย as Scullery does, the โright fitโ is paramount.
Scullery maintainsย a special feeling throughout the space: Itโs like a shiny new, classic Third Waveย SFย coffee shop, but imbued with a sense of history and place, a feeling of providence, of belonging. It is a feeling you may have forgotten that a sparkling new cafe in San Francisco could still produce. And for that, you have Lindley to thank.
Noah Sandersย (@sandersnoah) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in San Francisco, and a contributor to SF Weekly, Side One Track One, andย The Bold Italic. Read moreย Noah Sanders on Sprudge.
