Mongol Cafe, a Tenderloin restaurant that has operated at 842 Geary St. since 2019, has a pending Type 41 on-sale beer-and-wine application — its first alcohol license after nearly seven years pouring nothing stronger than tea.

Mongol Cafe, the restaurant at 842 Geary St. in the Tenderloin, is moving to pour for the first time. The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control took an original application for an on-sale beer-and-wine license at the address on Aug. 10, listing it as pending under license number 681066.

The permit sought is a Type 41 — on-sale beer and wine for a bona fide eating place, the license that lets a restaurant serve beer and wine with food but stops short of full spirits. The "ORI" action code on the ABC filing marks it as an original application rather than a transfer, meaning the room currently holds no alcohol license at all.

That is the notable part. This is not a new opening. City business records show Mongol Cafe registered at 842 Geary back on Nov. 18, 2019, under owner Chimedtseren Dashbyamba, with a later registration in November 2021. The room has run for nearly seven years on the lower-Geary stretch of the Tenderloin, and it is only now filing to put beer and wine on the table.

The address sits on one of the harder corridors in the city to carry a restaurant — a dense, foot-traffic-heavy block where turnover is constant and margins are thin. A beer-and-wine license is one of the few levers a small, food-first room has to lift a check average without rebuilding the kitchen, and for an operator who has held the same address through the pandemic years, it reads as a bet on staying rather than a debut.

The application is pending; ABC posts new filings for a 30-day protest window before a license issues, so nothing pours yet. Seat count and a beverage program are not yet on the public record. What the paperwork establishes is the move itself: a seven-year Tenderloin room, run by the same ownership since 2019, applying to serve its first glass of wine.