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Music, Books & Crepes Add Up to Pajama-Level Comfort in Glen Park
Two hidden gems where everyone knows your name
The twangle of guitar notes greeted me just inside the door to Bird and Beckett, the durable independent bookstore in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood. After grazing the artful stack of used books to the right of the entrance, perusing the shelves of new books to the left, I ambled toward the source of the music.
The bookstore is just around the corner from Higher Grounds Coffee Shop and Creperie, where I had lingered over a savory crepe fragrant with a dusting of nutmeg. The egg filling was cushioned in mozzarella and ricotta, then wrapped in a crisped-just-right, delicate pancake. A cloud of mixed greens salad and a side of country fried potatoes completed the plate.
Bird and Beckett and Higher Grounds are the kind of places you want to be when you don’t want to be home, but you don’t want to be anyplace away from home, either. You’ve heard of two-bite brownies — brownies just big enough to satisfy an urge for sweets without over-indulging? That’s what B & B and Higher Grounds are — two levels above couch-potato comfortable, places you can meet friends or wallow in solitude without actually being alone.
Higher Grounds is a modest space, its ceiling lined with burlap coffee bags atop barn wood walls. The floor is well-worn red concrete. The chalkboard menu is posted over the high counter that separates a tiny cooking space from the cafe’s 10 or 12 tables (there are a few more on the sidewalk). Besides sweet or savory crepes, the menu includes omelets, bagels and coffee drinks.
Barista, cook, waiter and owner Manhal Jweinat — he’s truly a one-man perpetual motion machine — opened the place 40-some years ago.
Slender, with gnarled hands and close-cropped grey hair, Jweinat works deliberately. He turns from the counter to the stove, pours crepe batter from 32-ounce sour cream containers, plates the food, takes payment [cash or Venmo only] and delivers the orders. Even on a busy Sunday, the pace was steady and the wait time wasn’t unreasonably long.
