On a recent Friday night, a drag queen with Easter-egg hair and a shiny leotard briskly corralled incoming diners at the new Hamburger Mary’s on Castro Street. Another host in a cascading pink wig led large groups underneath a bank of television screens playing the customary divas — SZA, Madonna and Mariah — into a back room with a translucent sunroof.

In just over a month, Hamburger Mary’s has become the hottest restaurant in the Castro, no small feat for a place that primarily serves decent burgers and watery cocktails with names that few customers would want to explain to a 12-year-old.

But Mary’s is a native San Francisco institution. Born on Folsom Street in 1972, the original location closed in 2001. The new site, on Castro near 18th Street, has been reborn as part of a national chain of franchises.

Its triumphant return, though, has been tempered by a nagging detail: The property’s owner and a partner in the new Mary’s, Les Natali, is one of the most controversial entrepreneurs in the Castro. As the owner or key player in Castro businesses such as the Patio Cafe, Badlands and the Detour, he has been the subject of protests, investigations and grumbling for years, including allegations of human rights violations. As a landlord, he has evicted popular tenants and let properties languish vacant for more than a decade.

Natali has not responded to The Chronicle’s requests for comment. But it seems that even as the seats at Hamburger Mary’s fill with lesbian couples in their 70s and young men nuzzling one another over drinks, his association with the reborn landmark has some Castro residents fretting over whether they should step inside.

“Natali is a very troubling figure to hold as much economic and cultural power as he does in a neighborhood that is supposed to be a worldwide place of belonging and homecoming for queer and trans people,” said Sonoma State Professor Don Romesburg, co-founder of a group that protested Natali’s bars for years.

The first Hamburger Mary’s was located at Folsom and 11th streets, across the street from the original location of the Stud, now one of the longest-running LGBT clubs in San Francisco. According to a 2001 Chronicle article, the restaurant was opened by a group of friends led by Trixie, who also went by Jerry Jones.

Whereas other gay restaurants like Jackson’s or the Fickle Fox might have accompanied a meal with live piano music or go-go dancers, Hamburger Mary’s distinguished itself by its wood-and-clutter decor, ample greenery and giant plates. Men in leather chaps and queer kids in willowy dresses and facial hair felt equally at home there.

They weren’t alone. “Whenever someone came from out of town, you had to take them there in the 1970s,” says Mark Abramson, author of “Minnesota Boy.” “It was such an unusual place. You’d see people tripping on acid next to a couple of secretaries from the Financial District. You could be kind of nuts, and nobody cared.”

Before the San Francisco original closed in 2001, Hamburger Mary’s grew into a franchise operation. There are now 20 locations across the country. The company says it operates as a family of independently run restaurants, though they retain a certain consistency in menu and tone. All serve Meaty Mushroom and Sloppy Mary burgers with Angus beef, and send diners the bill tucked into a high-heel shoe. In a sense, Hamburger Mary’s has become the gay TGI Friday’s.

According to T.J. Bruce, a partner and general manager at the new Castro location, “drag is a big part of the concept. Top-notch food, fresh-cut fries, all the other things are too, but the drag shows are a big part.” The VH1 show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” screens at many locations, including the Castro, on Thursday nights.

Many people in the neighborhood are simply excited to see 531 Castro St., which previously operated as the Patio Cafe, reopen. At tables along the banquette on one Friday night, diners old enough to remember the Patio held the same conversation, punctuated by gasps of realization:

“This place has been closed for, what, a decade?”

“Eighteen years.”

Liquor license records indicate that Natali bought the popular Patio Cafe in the 1980s and ran it until it closed in July 2000, ostensibly for remodeling. Shortly afterward, Natali began taking over Castro bars: first Badlands in 2000, then the Detour in 2002.

In 2004, a group of activists began collecting reports of racial discrimination from patrons and former staff of Badlands. After a 10-month investigation, San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission published a report in 2005 documenting allegations that the bar asked for as many as three pieces of identification from African American customers and selectively enforced its dress code to deny entrance to people of color.

That year, Natali bought a majority ownership stake in the Pendulum, San Francisco’s only African American gay bar, and closed it down. After a renovation, he reopened it as Toad Hall.

The activists, who called their organization And Castro for All, demanded the city take action, protesting outside Badlands on Saturday nights. Natali appealed the commission’s report, and according to Romesburg, the business owner settled with the group for an undisclosed sum that was used in part on a campaign to promote diversity in the San Francisco LGBT community.

Meanwhile, the huge Patio Cafe in the heart of the Castro also sat boarded up. Building Department permits show a pattern of stop-and-start activity, as well as minor complaints: paint flaking into the neighbor’s yard, barricades left up too long. Some simply complained that 531 Castro had been vacant too long.

In 2012, a new flurry of permits was issued, and local media reported that Natali was trying to open a Hamburger Mary’s location. And then nothing.

“Over the years, the neighborhood association had done everything it could to support Les Natali in his applications for conditional use permits,” said Mark McHale, president of the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association. “We were disappointed every time he would come back empty-handed. There was a lot of ‘boy calling wolf’ and things promised, so it tainted his reputation in the community.”

In 2015, Zapata Mexican Grill owner Jorge Perez said that Natali, his landlord, was refusing to extend his lease after 21 years in business. After the two parties negotiated several short-term extensions, Perez finally closed his business in August 2017. The space has also sat vacant since. A few months ago, a giant “Taqueria Space for Lease, Price Reduced!” banner appeared, infuriating former Zapata regulars.

To finally open Hamburger Mary’s, Natali called on Bruce, who owns several bars, including the Sacramento location of Badlands, and Larry Metzger, owner of the Mix in San Francisco. Bruce estimates that the team has hired 30 staffers so far, including a number who work or perform in drag. Members of the Hamburger Mary’s corporate team spent a few weeks in town, helping the restaurant make its debut on March 13.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a former San Francisco supervisor, tweeted that the restaurant’s opening is a “big win for the neighborhood.”

It took barely a few days for the crowds to begin flocking in, and they have not abated. There is clearly an audience for Hamburger Mary’s trademark brand of fun.

Yet, in the Castro, a small village hidden behind crowds of visitors, it’s still hard to have a conversation about Hamburger Mary’s without discussing Natali.

When the Bay Area Reporter, an LGBT newspaper, posted on Facebook about the opening, the comments from readers ranged from hopeful to incredulous to calls for boycott.

Even though the new restaurant resembles its Folsom Street predecessor about as much as the “Beach Blanket Babylon” cast does the politicians it mimics, it makes sense that the largest LGBT-themed restaurant franchise in the country should have an outpost in the Castro.

On its website, the franchise lays claim to its San Francisco history. Even as it has grown, it says, it has retained its original motto: “An open-air bar and grill for open-minded people.”

But for some, the question is whether that sentiment is shared by the new restaurant’s owner.

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jonkauffman