Yaron Milgrom. Photo credit: Timmy Malloy, sous chef at Local's Corner
Mission District resident Yaron Milgrom didn’t plan on becoming a restaurant owner five years ago when he moved to San Francisco with his wife Miriam, who was training to be a doctor at San Francisco General Hospital. Milgrom owns Local’s Corner and Local: Mission Eatery and is at work on a third Mission food business. He had studied Medieval Jewish Mysticism at NYU. While he's maybe not the most likely candidate to build two successful restaurants, Milgrom has succeeded so far. He was drawn to the idea of creating community and feeding others, hence the use of work local for both businesses. Bay Area Bites caught up with Milgrom to find out what it’s like to start two food eateries from scratch and what his plans are for the future.
Bay Area Bites: How has the Mission changed and what role do you see your restaurants playing in those changes, if any?
Milgrom: I moved to the neighborhood five years ago and pretty much the week we moved here, Dynamo Donuts opened. That marks the beginning of a certain reconsideration of the neighborhood and a real possibility for a broader diversity and different culinary opportunity in the neighborhood. We came here to be near SF General, where my wife was training. We fell in love with the neighborhood and thought it really needed options that were locally sourced, well prepared and from scratch.
My family and I really loved 24th street, because it’s tree lined and colorful and interesting but later in the day, there wasn’t necessarily a great feeling of safety. So we came up with the idea to make the street more safe and welcoming as a goal, and to be a street presence. Now, our restaurants are open five days a week and we have customers eating dinner ‘til eleven at night.
The changes here in the last five years include Dynamo Donuts, Humphry Slocombe, us, Heirloom, flour + water, Pig and Pie and newly opened retail and gallery spaces. All of those are transitions for the neighborhood; we’re hoping for crossover appeal, and not only from a class and race standpoint.