Fire at Original Joe’s in North Beach quickly contained, no injuries

A Wednesday evening fire at Original Joe’s jolted one of North Beach’s busiest restaurant blocks, sending firefighters to 601 Union St. and forcing evacuations near Union Street, Stockton Street and Columbus Avenue just as the dinner crowd would normally be building around Washington Square Park.

The San Francisco Fire Department said the one-alarm blaze was contained to one building by 8:19 p.m. and was extinguished in about 10 minutes. Crews found heavy smoke coming from the roof and said the problem involved a flue near the cooking area behind the restaurant. Officials later said there were no injuries or displacements as of 9:11 p.m.

The restaurant and a neighboring residential building were evacuated out of caution, a reminder of how quickly a fire in an older mixed-use North Beach block can ripple outward. Even without reported injuries, the incident briefly interrupted the foot traffic that supports nearby dining rooms, bars and storefronts, while firefighters urged people to avoid the area as they worked.

Original Joe’s has long been one of the neighborhood’s anchor businesses. The restaurant describes its North Beach location as overlooking Washington Square Park in a building that once housed the legendary Fior d’Italia and more than six decades of San Francisco dining. Original Joe’s says it has been serving classic Italian-American fare since 1937, and the North Beach location is promoted as a major private-events venue and part of the city’s fabric for more than 80 years.

That history made Wednesday’s fire more than a routine alarm in a restaurant corridor that depends on steady evening activity. North Beach’s dense mix of residences, kitchens and pedestrian traffic means even a small ignition point can trigger a wider safety response, and investigators were still sorting out the cause and whether the kitchen was the likely origin. For now, the block has avoided the worst-case outcome, but the episode showed how fragile a busy North Beach night can be when smoke starts coming from the roof of a landmark restaurant.