Is Rocco's Café Still Open? Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives Update

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Season 6, Episode 10 Aired June 15, 2009

On Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy Fieri visited Rocco's Cafe at 1131 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California, featuring the restaurant's home-style Italian breakfast and lunch cooking. Rocco's traces to "Rocco's Fine Food," founded in 1932, and moved to its present Folsom Street address in 1991 after renovations, according to SF Heritage. The cafe closed temporarily for a major street-construction project near the restaurant and fully reopened in January 2026, according to a Yelp listing for the business. That Yelp listing, updated August 2026, shows more than 1,200 reviews and posted hours across the week, indicating the restaurant is again serving customers in the neighborhood where it has operated for decades.

Mystery Diners, Season 5, Episode 3 Aired January 20, 2014

Mystery Diners' Jan. 20, 2014 episode "Money on the Side" (Season 5, Episode 3) featured Rocco's Cafe in San Francisco. According to IMDb and TVmaze episode listings, owner Don contacted Charles Stiles after hearing rumors that his manager was running unauthorized promotions on the side. Undercover Mystery Diners Brianna and Nate went to work at the restaurant and found that the manager had a friend pose as the actor Jamie Foxx, charging customers a fee for a photo and an autograph; the investigation also found a busboy who was eating on the job and lying about not speaking English to avoid trouble.

In the confrontation, Don fired both the manager and the busboy. Wikipedia's article on the series, citing its sources, notes that the show carries a credits disclaimer stating that events may be re-enacted for dramatic purposes, and cites a television critic who described the show's scenarios as implausible and its resolutions as staged. This appearance is tracked here as an additional TV credit for the business already profiled on this site as Rocco's Café; that existing profile carries the current status and address for the Folsom Street location. At the time of filming, Rocco's Cafe operated as a breakfast-and-lunch, counter-service spot in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, according to the same episode listings.