Six months ago, getting a seat at La Cigale meant standing on Chenery Street before 4:30 in the afternoon, watching the fog roll down from Diamond Heights, and hoping your name landed high enough on a waitlist to score one of fifteen stools around a wood-fired hearth. Regulars knew the drill. Everyone else gave up.
That specific version of Glen Park no longer exists, the decade-long vacancy two doors down has ended, and the second-year street market on Kern is approaching its final Saturday. Three developments, all within a few blocks of each other, are unfolding in the same calendar year. Together, they show how businesses and events along Chenery and Kern are changing.
The Line That Used to Be the Point
La Cigale opened at 679 Chenery in the fall of 2025 after chef Joseph Magidow and his wife, Daisy Linden, spent more than three years turning the space into something closer to dinner theater than a restaurant. Fifteen seats around a hexagonal wooden counter, one chef working an open hearth, a flat prix fixe price with tax and tip built in. No à la carte, no substitutions, no reservations you could make from your couch. You either showed up in person or you didn't eat there.
Magidow said he designed the walk-in approach with nearby residents in mind.
It didn't hold. By late June 2026, La Cigale had scrapped the walk-in system entirely and moved onto OpenTable, splitting the night into two prepaid seatings at 5 and 8 p.m. Magidow told the San Francisco Standard the old approach simply had more downsides than upsides once you tallied them up. "The way things used to be done is arguably superior," he said, but running a hearth-based tasting menu on a paper waitlist wasn't sustainable.
Neighbors and visitors now use the same reservation system.
Twelve Years Empty, Then a Piano Teacher From Paris
A Glen Park Association account traces the storefront's history. A hundred feet from La Cigale, 683 Chenery spent most of the last decade as the kind of storefront every neighborhood has: the one everyone has an opinion about and nobody can quite explain. The address goes back to 1908, when Vogel Bros. Meat Co. ran one of Glen Park's three butcher shops there. The original building came down in 1929, replaced by a Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean Revival structure that Alfred Vogel put up himself. It held a laundromat through the 1970s, then Diamond Pizza from 1977 until 2000, then Chenery Park, a fine-dining spot residents still bring up with real fondness, until it closed abruptly in 2014. After that, the building sat empty for roughly twelve years.
During the 2025 demolition to convert the space, construction crews found a 96-year-old tile mosaic behind the drywall, still spelling out Vogel Bros. Meat Co. in green and yellow, as crisp as the day it went up. It couldn't be salvaged along with the rest of the interior, which is its own small loss for anyone who cares about the block's layered history.
What's replacing all of that is Crescendo Music Studios, opened by Aurèlie Veruni Morales, a Paris-born pianist and opera singer who spent the past ten years teaching piano and choir at Lycée Français in San Francisco. The studio held its open house on Labor Day, September 7, with classes starting the following morning: piano, guitar, violin, cello, flute, voice, choir, plus hip-hop, modern jazz, and musical theater for kids and adults.
Crescendo offers music, dance, and theater classes for kids and adults at 683 Chenery.
One Saturday Left on Kern Street
Around the corner, Kern Street between Diamond and Brompton has spent its second summer as the site of the Glen Park Night Market, a series that first appeared in 2025 and returned for a second season this year. It happens the third Saturday of the month, June through September, funded by a Civic Joy Fund grant, the same city money behind First Thursdays downtown and a handful of other neighborhood night markets across San Francisco. It's produced by Di Brito of ArtWalk SF, with craft vendors, live music, and a kids' section with face painting and chalk.
The 2026 season closes out on Saturday, September 19, running from the afternoon into the evening. After that, Kern Street goes quiet until next June.
The night market is a seasonal event on Kern Street, distinct from the restaurants and storefront businesses on Chenery.
What Actually Changes If You Live Here
Together, these updates include La Cigale's new OpenTable reservations, the opening of Crescendo Music Studios at 683 Chenery, and the Glen Park Night Market's scheduled September 19 season finale.
If any of that affects your plans this month, it's straightforward. Book La Cigale directly through OpenTable rather than planning to walk up, since the 5 and 8 p.m. seatings fill from the app now, not the sidewalk. If piano or dance lessons are on your list for a kid this fall, Crescendo's fall schedule includes piano and dance classes for kids. And if you want one more evening on Kern Street before the vendors pack up for the winter, September 19 is the last chance until next summer.
Glen Park's commercial blocks have always changed slowly, which is part of what people love about the neighborhood. This year, three things changed in different ways. Their offerings and schedules are useful to know if you plan to visit.
Cheryl Bower has spent years tracking exactly this kind of change across Glen Park and the rest of the Peninsula and San Francisco micro-markets she serves, the small shifts on a single block that add up to how a neighborhood actually feels to live in. If you're weighing a move within Glen Park or just want a read on what your home is worth given how the neighborhood is evolving, Get Your Home Valuation and start the conversation.
