By Su Yardimci

On Taraval Street, near the western edge of the City, the morning arrives slowly. Surfers cross back from Ocean Beach with boards under their arms, dog walkers loop the block on their way home and the L train rolls toward the end of its line, letting the last of its riders out into the salt air.

For the past eight years, the corner near 46th Avenue has belonged to Avenues, the surf-and-coffee shop that has quietly become a fixture of the Outer Sunset.

Owner Eddie Choi had lived in the neighborhood for more than two decades before opening the shop in 2018, so planting a flag here felt personal. Taraval Street was not part of any strict plan. At the time it was rawer and less developed than Judah or Irving streets, home to longtime spots like the Bashful Bull, Riptide, Brothers Pizza and a couple of mahjong clubs. Choi saw room to bring new energy to the street, and when timing and opportunity lined up, it felt like a now-or-never moment.

The name carries two meanings. The literal one was easy, the shop sits in the avenues, and that is simply where it is. But Choi was drawn to the second layer – the idea of avenues as the different paths people take in life and of getting outside, moving, exploring and meeting people along the way. That same spirit runs through the menu and the retail, much of it shaped by travel, different cultures and the flavors and design the shop has gathered over the years.

Avenues opened with a real surf-and-retail spirit: boards, apparel and a coffee program built around Verve Coffee Roasters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the shop pivoted toward food. The expanded menu resonated so strongly that it became the heart of the business. A light presence of surf and the outdoors remains, but today Avenues runs first as a kitchen, even if the original idea, community, creativity and coastal culture, still holds it all together.

The spam musubi has taken on a life of its own. Choi knew from the start that he wanted it on the menu, a way to share the grab-and-go ritual he loved from Hawaii, something easy to carry to the beach or the park. It did not catch on right away. It took a few years before the neighborhood folded it into its routines, and now regulars race the hot case before flavors sell out.

Around the dish, Choi has built a menu of Asian-inspired comfort food made for life by the ocean: a Japanese curry bowl paired with musubi, and a kimchee stew he still makes by hand.

What keeps people standing out front, Choi says, was always the point. Avenues started with communal seating on the back patio, the tone set early that this was a place to share a table rather than just grab and go. These days the lingering happens on the sidewalk, the neighborhood deciding on its own that this is a corner worth stopping at. Choi thinks that matters more now than it did when he opened. So much of life has moved onto screens, he notes, and a place where someone behind the counter knows your name and your order is not a small thing anymore. People will need spots like this more, not less.

A long-awaited renovation is coming soon, including the reopening of the back, to better accommodate the way the neighborhood actually uses the shop now.

After eight years on Taraval, Avenues is less a new arrival than a familiar one, the kind of corner the Outer Sunset has come to recognize as its own.

Avenues is located at 3606 Taraval St. at 46th Avenue and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Find more information at avsf.co.

Su Yardimci is a San Francisco enthusiast who has turned her childhood dream into reality. After moving to the Bay Area for college, she has been sharing her love for the City through film photography and neighborhood guides.