Oklava Cafe, a Turkish all-day cafe from the team behind SoMa's Turquaz, opened July 7 on the ground floor of Saluhall at 945 Market St. — placing an operator with a proven Palo Alto original into a mid-Market food hall the SF Standard calls struggling.

Oklava Cafe opened July 7 on the ground floor of Saluhall, the food hall at 945 Market St. next to Ikea in mid-Market. It is the second San Francisco project from Aziz Aslan and Elif Uzun, the owners behind Turquaz, the Turkish restaurant on the corner of 8th and Mission.

The operators are not new to the concept. Aslan and Uzun have run the original Oklava Cafe in Palo Alto since 2023; the Saluhall counter is the SF debut of that name, filed with the City as Oklava Cafe Inc. and registered May 5 at 945 Market St., Suite 105, per San Francisco business records. A companion registration, Oklava Plus Cafe at Suite 102, was filed the same day.

The menu runs all day and cheap — a single dollar sign on the price scale. Mornings bring Turkish coffee pulled from Sightglass-roasted beans, pistachio lattes, and Mediterranean pastries: baklava, borek, and simit, the sesame-crusted ring bread sometimes called a Turkish bagel. All-day breakfast covers avocado toast and omelets; lunch and dinner add lahmacun — the thin flatbread topped with minced meat, tomato, pepper, and herbs — alongside small plates of babaganoush, kofte, and hummus. Hours run 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The bet worth noting is the address. The SF Standard describes Saluhall as a "struggling food hall" adjacent to Ikea. Dropping an all-day Turkish cafe into that ground floor is a wager that mid-Market's daytime commuter traffic, not its dinner crowd, is what a low-price coffee-and-mezze counter can live on.

That math favors an operator who already runs two rooms and knows the format. Turquaz gives Aslan and Uzun a Turkish kitchen a few blocks away; the Palo Alto Oklava gives them three years of running the exact concept now installed at Saluhall. For a food hall that has struggled to fill its stalls, a proven operator with a $ price point and a morning-first menu is close to the profile it needs.