When Ryan Blumenthal scoped the location for his first restaurant, he was over the moon. From the tinted front window, the impressive brick facades of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital loomed in full view.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. There’s thousands of people that work across the street,’” Blumenthal said.
In 2017 he opened Newkirk’s, the Philly cheesesteak restaurant known for East Coast-style breakfast sandwiches and homemade hot sauces, and “as soon as I opened the doors, people started coming in,” Blumenthal said. And not just anyone: “Doctors.”
Indeed, the six-year-old sandwich spot has developed a symbiotic relationship with one of the oldest hospitals in the West. The doctors, nurses and techs who come in heal the city; and from 8 to mid-afternoon, Newkirk’s keeps them fed.
“Wait long enough, and you’ll see like, 20 doctors come in here,” said Dr. David Chia, a doctor of internal medicine, dressed in his white coat, stethoscope dangling from his neck. He likes the Bronx pastrami sandwich, and just shy of 1 p.m. on a recent Friday, he was nearly finished.
He’s not alone. Blumenthal estimates roughly 80 percent of his weekday customers walk across the street from the hospital.
As a customer in chef’s whites grabbed his order to-go, Blumenthal explained: He cooks for the hospital. “But he gets his cheesesteak here!”
Indeed, come in at lunch hour and see a rush of forest-green scrubs, face masks, medical badges, and closed-toed shoes. Newkirk’s probably breaks even on that one hour alone, Blumenthal said. During the rush, Newkirk’s phones are off and online ordering shuts down. “It’s too much at once,” said Blumenthal.
It was during the pandemic that Newkirk’s won the heart of Julie Feuer, the hospital’s inpatient psychiatry social work director, and many of her colleagues. As it became clear medical workers were too busy to even pick up food, Newkirk’s delivered meals directly to the hospital through the SF New Deal program that paid restaurants to feed essential workers.
“Not having to think about getting food was so helpful, you know? It was one of the big reasons why I ended up coming here,” Feuer said. “And after that, [I came] for the egg sandwiches.”
Fresh off of work, Feuer strolled in, dark shades on and a white face mask hanging from her wrist. She ordered her usual: A sausage egg and cheese, or “SEC,” just like those found in New York’s bodegas, where she used to live.
“She’s my favorite,” said Tonantzin Alcantar Bratt, who works the register.
Get me a philly cheesesteak, STAT
Blink and you would have missed Curtis Geier on Friday morning. The emergency department clinical pharmacist walked through Newkirk’s door at 9 a.m. in his cranberry scrubs, and Blumenthal emerged with Geier’s usual, already ready-to-go: A coffee and an SEC.
Geier works the 6 a.m. shift, and if he’s lucky, he said, “I have 10 minutes to grab a coffee and a SEC.”
The ability to order ahead and to-go saves time, especially with a stressful and unpredictable schedule, said Dennis Dentoni-Lasofsky, a nurse in Ward 86, the legendary and internationally renowned AIDS ward. He returns to Newkirk’s once a week for the sandwiches’ “quality bread,” he said. “The ease of a sandwich,” makes the shop more convenient than places that are “more sit-down-y,” said Dentoni-Lasofsky.
And in the health industry, one can’t sit still for long. A group of trauma surgeons tend to dine in, but always ask for their food in to-go containers, in case they get paged for an emergency — which has happened more than once. In a pinch, they abandon their food and sprint across the street to the emergency room.
“They’d be like, ‘Ryan, put my food behind the counter!’” Blumenthal said. “And they’d all just be gone.” Once the crisis is averted, they often return.
SF hospital patients, Newkirk’s patience
A woman who recently immigrated from Russia stopped in after her obstetrician appointment. Her goal? Finally try a BLT, a “stereotypical” American food.
Mission Local food reviewer Maria Ascarrunz discovered the restaurant’s BEC (bacon-egg-and-cheese) after receiving her Covid-19 vaccine at San Francisco General in 2021, four years after Newkirk’s opened. By her calculations, that was four years too late: “That’s four years of my life not having had this deliciously iconic sandwich for breakfast,” Ascarrunz wrote. “Well, no more.”
Given the hospital’s prestige, size and uncommon designation as a Level 1 Trauma Center, it’s not uncommon to see visitors of severely or chronically ill patients wander through Newkirk’s doors. A customer peruses the menu, and just unloads, said the cashier Alcantar Bratt.
“They’ll just say, ‘Here’s where I’m at.’ We’ll take that into consideration,” she said. The other cashier “Justin and I want to make sure they’re okay, and that mentally, physically, they’re nourished.”
A couple’s son was comatose for two weeks, and the pair went to Newkirk’s daily. Blumenthal learned they were from Akron, Ohio, his grandmother’s hometown, and it was her surname that gave Newkirk its name. (It’s also Blumenthal’s middle name.) Finally, when the young man woke up, the couple brought him to Newkirk’s to eat.
It’s a moment like that, Blumenthal said, that “makes you want to cry.”
Exactly what the doctor ordered
After six years, Blumenthal has the hospital code down: Cranberry scrubs mean emergency department, forest green scrubs signal operating staff. And the others at Newkirk’s have observed some quirks.
“A lot of surgeons don’t like hot sauce,” Alcantar Bratt observed. “Nurses love coffee and Diet Coke. Green salads are very popular with the doctors.”
Occasionally, a group of nurses who have just finished a night shift will come in at 8 a.m. sharp and order a brewski with their breakfast sandwich.
Tito Sotomayor, an employee at the Hummingbird Respite Center, treated himself to an IPA during a coveted extended lunch break. “It’s nice on a hot day,” he said.
For the customers who dine here every day, “you get to see what’s happening with their family, vacation, or life,” Alcantar Bratt said. “It’s beautiful.”
Newkirk’s is open Tuesday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Order in person at 1002 Potrero Ave. near 22nd Street, call 415-962-7695, or order online. Follow them on social media here.
Newkirks is fantastic – great food and terrific service and they even have pinball!
Love Newkirk’s! Such legit sandwiches. The cheesesteaks are incredible and everyone that works there is rad.