Top photo: Hand rolls at a hand-roll bar; shown for illustration. Photo: Andy Li / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Hand rolls have become one of San Francisco’s steadiest restaurant trends, and the newest entry arrives with an unusual accent. Handroll Hawker opened Sept. 29 at 2360 Polk Street in Russian Hill (Eater SF; SFist).
Its founder, Romi Trower, is an Australian filmmaker who spent two years working toward the opening. In Australia, she told Eater, uncut hand rolls are “as common as getting a sandwich or a salad for lunch.” Her menu includes a cooked tuna roll with cucumber and mayonnaise that she calls “the Australian classic,” according to Eater SF. The chef is Tai Trinh, who previously cooked at Robin, the San Francisco omakase restaurant (Eater SF).
The opening menu lists nine rolls, including two vegan options, and the shop is built mostly for takeout, with a few tables. It is open from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily, according to Eater SF. The hours, unusual on a nightlife-heavy stretch of Polk, signal a bet on lunch and early dinner rather than late-night trade (Eater SF).
The Pass has not yet seen a named critic’s review of Handroll Hawker and will note one when it appears.
How The Pass is reported. The Pass is a reported column, not a meal review. The Inquirer did not dine at Handroll Hawker for this column. Descriptions of dishes come from the restaurant’s published menu and from its chefs and owners as quoted in the reporting linked above. Hours and menu details are as reported by Eater SF and SFist in late September and early October 2026 and may change. Health inspection information: no public score is available; San Francisco’s public score dataset has not been updated since 2019. Handroll Hawker was not contacted for this column. The Pass does not award stars. Restaurants mentioned are not charged for coverage and are not advertisers’ picks. Corrections: editor@sfinquirer.com.
More from The Pass: sfinquirer.com/tag/the-pass
Odette Ferrante writes The Pass, the Inquirer’s weekly reported restaurant column, and covers the restaurants, chefs and food businesses of San Francisco and the Bay Area for the Inquirer’s Dining section. More from Odette Ferrante
