Top photo: Castro and 18th streets. Photo: Burkhard Mücke / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Mama Ji’s, the Sichuan restaurant that has fed the Castro from 4416 18th Street for more than a decade, serves its last meals on Saturday, Oct. 31. Its owners, Lily Ji and Marv Wolpa, told The San Francisco Standard that their landlord raised the rent, citing rising insurance costs and an inability to charge more for the apartment upstairs. “That’s my decision to not continue,” Ms. Ji said (The San Francisco Standard).
The restaurant began as a pop-up before becoming a full restaurant in 2013, and over the years it became a neighborhood fixture for dim sum, kung pao shrimp and hot-and-numbing fish. The couple, who live in the Castro, have said they are ready to retire. “Work is a lot; I won’t miss the work,” she told The Standard. “But I will miss the people” (The San Francisco Standard).
The closing is a familiar San Francisco story with a newer twist. Rent increases have long pushed small restaurants out of neighborhood corridors; increasingly, landlords point to insurance, whose premiums in California have climbed sharply as carriers retreat from the market, as the reason. For an independent restaurant running on thin margins, a few hundred dollars more a month can decide whether a lease is worth renewing.
Asked what comes next, Ms. Ji had a one-word answer for The Standard: “Relax!”
How The Pass is reported. The Pass is a reported column, not a meal review. The Inquirer did not dine at Mama Ji’s 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. Details of the closing are as reported by The San Francisco Standard on Oct. 6, 2026. Health inspection information: not applicable to this closing note. Mama Ji’s 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.
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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
