Sparky's 24 Hours Diner

​It's four in the morning and you're starving. Where should you go?

San Francisco eateries aren't very good at staying open into the wee hours, so we've compiled a list of places for you to go to in case the cupboard is bare when you want a midnight snack.

More >>

Soul Groove

​It's a weekend night, and you've been drinking in the Mission for hours. Despite this, you feel an unusual sensation of emptiness. Is it your career? Did you forget to have children?

NO! You're just hungry. Whew.

You could have a burrito, the official late-night food of the Mission, but you want something less healthy.

The Soul Groove Chicken and Waffle Sandwich Pop-Up shop is for you.

The sandwich: boneless, bacon-wrapped chicken that is buttermilk-fried and served on maple waffles with a spicy maple barbecue sauce.

The location: The Corner restaurant on 18th at Mission.

The hours: 11 p.m.-3 a.m., Thursday to Saturday

The creators: Jason Fordley and Vincent Sacco, who just returned to San Francisco from New York, where they worked in marketing and bartending respectively.

The calories and nutritional content: You probably don't want to know. I know we don't.

Luis Chong

San Dong House BBQ's pork dumplings: Great flavor.

​We were strolling around the Inner Richmond area one night when we spotted a new Shandong cuisine restaurant and decided to check it out. San Dong House BBQ replaced Teo Korean ― the old exhaust hoods for the table grills still hang from the ceiling. House specialties here are hand-pulled Chinese noodles (la mian, $6.99) soups, handmade dumplings (sui jiao, $5.99-$6.99 per dozen), grilled skewers (chuan, $1.50-$3 each) and many offal dishes (mostly $7.99).

This piqued our interest, since there are only a handful of restaurants in the city that make hand-pulled Chinese noodles: San Tung, King of Noodles, San Wang, and Beijing Restaurant. Best of all, unlike the other places we mentioned, San Dong House makes the noodles in full view of customers, a great opportunity for anyone who's never seen this before.

More >>

Tamara Palmer

​Soul Cocina's Roger Feely loves to shake up street food conventions with his Outside In parties. For the sixth installment, he's messing with time. Sure, you can get bacon-wrapped hot dogs and crêpes late at night, but Outside In 6 will add to that some Latin DJs, live music, something called pizza fritta (by PizzaHacker), Cuban sandwiches/medianoches, chilaquiles, cactus chips, and hot salsa from Soul Cocina, meals from Saucy Dumplings and Evil Jerk Cart, and more to be kept under wraps until just before the event. Even the Mission location is so far a secret.

More >>

Vanessa V./Yelp

Something you couldn't get at the corner store Hog and Rocks replaced.

​We dipped into Hogs and Rocks last night. We were trying to remember what once occupied the space it inhabits on the corner of 19th Street and San Carlos in the Mission, and couldn't, for the life of us, recall. And then, 20 minutes later, as we gnawed on a strip of Berkshire ham wrapped around a half-sphere of roasted apricot, it came to us. A friend lived just down the street six years ago, and we used to go buy beer and It's-Its from a corner store hugging the same wedge of pavement.

While the muted interior bears no resemblance to the site's prior tenant, the joints' ethos overlaps a bit. With small plates hinging on the often magical interplay between sea and swine, Hogs and Rocks is a great place for late-night vittles, providing restorative sustenance, and reasonably priced refreshments a good hour or so after regular restaurants have closed up shop ― midnight currently. You can, for example, enjoy a $2 can of Schlitz. However, unlike your local corner store, the person behind this counter won't serve it to you in a brown bag. Plus, you can get a fleet of crisp, light Summer Ice oysters on the side.

Hog and Rocks: 3431 19th St. (at San Carlos), 550-8627.

Suckafreeze

The Wonton Clan: From left, Roland Bautista, Diwata Bacani, and Prince Aries.

​The city's grassroots food scene has sprouted tires and gotten a slick new wrap. The rise of food trucks this summer has all but eclipsed startup food carts. But a new table-bound vendor ― Wonton Clan ― is on the verge of breaking out.

Wonton Clan made its formal debut last weekend at Som. Makes sense, since it's an outgrowth of event promoters Aries Nuñez ― DJ Prince Aries ― of Distortion 2 Static, Roland Bautista of GetLive.SF, and Diwata Bacani of Reignforest Collective. "We were booking other food carts for our own events, and just fascinated by everything to do with nightlife culture," says Nuñez, who along with his twin brother Ariel produce the weekly hip-hop TV show Distortion 2 Static, which airs on WB 20. "Wonton Clan is our contribution to the scene."

More >>

Claudine C./Yelp

​Nombe hasn't been around for too long, but the Mission District izakaya keeps switching up its game at a nearly frantic pace, from late-night window service, to brunch to, starting next month, a snack-food counter. This snack food counter won't, of course, serve Cracker Jacks and soft pretzels. Think noodles, chicken wings, and okonomiyaki, at prices ($4-$11) that won't gut your wallet ― depending, we suppose, on whether you've been drinking at a pricey club or grandma's Heaven Hill-stocked basement lair.

Beginning July 7, Nombe's new "casual dining" setting will surface at a u-shaped bar adjacent to the eatery's front door. During normal business hours, the snack bar will offer the same menu as the regular restaurant; from 11 p.m. until 2 a.m., specials and quick bites await.

Nombe 2491 Mission (at 21st St.), 681-7150.

Marisol Segal.

​Happy Endings Kitchen is the late-night Filipino-influenced menu served from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays at Mercury Lounge. We stopped by post-concert last Friday around 1 a.m., ears still ringing, only to be greeted by the welcome (if loud) and impassioned singing of Lisa Lisa and other '80s freestyle divas.

It was raucous in there, but the service was still markedly friendly as we got down to ordering. Some clearly nice meat in the pork sisig nachos ($9) was obscured by distinctively icky fake cheese sauce, and the sweet potato fries ($7) had a pleasing crispness but cost about twice as much as they should, but there was one item that proved to be a solid value for taste and price. The Mercury Dawg ($5), a bacon-wrapped, kimchi-laden hot dog, could have used even more of the magical Sriracha sauce on top for us heat heathens, but still made its spicy, vinegared point well. It hasn't made us swear off street food that's actually from the street, but it's a good option for the wee hours.

Happy Endings Kitchen at Mercury Lounge 1582 Folsom (at 12th St.), 551-1582; Fri.-Sat. 10 p.m.-2 a.m.