Some of the Bay Area’s Hottest Pop-Ups Are Coming to This New SoMa Event Space

It’s an ambitious person who looks at a city as expensive as San Francisco and decides to open a mixed-use arts and food space. But Angelina Hong is just such an ambitious person. She’s run Gourmand Group, a food public relations firm, since 2020, and on October 8 she’ll debut her new venture, MOSA, a private lofted event space in SoMa. In early aughts pop-up form, she’ll release the space’s address a few days before each event. The name is a cheeky anagram of SoMa, the neighborhood Hong calls home after living in San Francisco for more than a decade — and she’s hosting a thunderously talented set of pop-up dinners to kick things off.

MOSA will host a four-chef pop-up supper series in its brand new two-story space from October 8 to November 4 with beverage sponsorship from Bay Area Korean-owned brewery Dokkaebier. The pop-ups feature chefs Lemuel Ramos and Christine Bui, then pop-ups SoulPhil, Dabao Singapore, and Hadeem (in that order) following. Each event hosts 20 ticketed diners while rotating Bay Area artists feature their for-sale work throughout the space; first up is Oakland-based Chonnessey Bowie. “I see MOSA as a way to celebrate human experience and gatherings,” Hong says. “I think we’re craving more of these experiences as people become more ‘efficient’ and are siloed from each other.”

Angelina Hong

Angelina Hong

Hong points to the tremendously successful Sunset Night Market as one such experience and a sold-out Outside Lands earlier this year as another. Her mission with the space is to invest in fledgling businesses and artists, projects that need an experienced team to support them in hosting in-person engagements. MOSA is available to rent for private events, and not just food events, either — the entrepreneur says she foresees a future wherein yoga classes and art demos are hosted a recurring basis. In general, she hopes to prioritize BIPOC artists.

It’s not that Hong is the first food industry pro to invest in San Francisco’s greater downtown area. At the grandest side of that spectrum might be the city itself partnering with celebrity chef Tyler Florence to revitalize Union Square. There’s also the Vacant to Vibrant program that sees pop-ups including Whack Donuts and York Street Coffee alongside local favorites such as Devil’s Teeth Bakery headed to Civic Center. “There’s so much conversation about this doom loop,” Hong says. “I always tell friends, it’s not as scary as the headlines make it seem. But I don’t always feel safe. I want to see a reinvestment in the creative and artistic industry.”

The pop-up series at MOSA begins October 8 and runs through November 4. Tickets for each event go on sale Friday, September 22.