When black residents vanish from a city known for culinary diversity, what happens to black-owned restaurants?

Farmerbrown is arguably San Francisco’s most celebrated black-owned restaurant. For the past 12 years, the Tenderloin business has been the city’s standard-bearer for soul food, a genre that has faded with the region’s changing demographics. Because of that, the restaurant’s owner, Jay Foster, believes businesses like Farmerbrown are more important than ever.

“Representation matters in restaurants. And when you have a black population in San Francisco that’s now basically almost nonexistent, it can be a problem,” Foster said.

Foster now has plans to open a new restaurant in the Fillmore, a neighborhood once dubbed the Harlem of the West — and an area increasingly desperate for a black-owned success story. There, he and his partners, Matthew Washington and Erin Traylor, will open an Afro Caribbean restaurant named Isla Vida.

“I think the timing with this worked out because right now, we need places that are highlighting brown or African American culture,” Foster said.

San Francisco’s black population, which only a few decades ago was around 13 percent, has dropped to roughly 6 percent, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

While Farmerbrown’s menu is focused on soul food — breaded and fried chicken, sides of leafy vegetables, yams or grits — Foster sees Isla Vida as his team’s chance to trace its African and Caribbean roots. The menu will center around grilled meats, an ode to Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica. The final Isla Vida menu could highlight everything from collard greens with roots in West Africa to the fried plantains connected to Jamaica.

Isla Vida is a passion project for Foster. He said he wanted to do something different than Farmerbrown or the similarly styled Little Skillet, which he played a role in opening with his wife, Deanna Sison Foster, in the South of Market neighborhood in 2014.

But just as important as Isla Vida itself is its location in the Fillmore, according to John Templeton, a historian with an emphasis on African American culture in San Francisco.

“It will be entrepreneurs like him that revive our community,” Templeton said.

With its three African American owners, Isla Vida could breathe new life into a neighborhood once called the Harlem of the West.

The Fillmore has seen an exodus of notable black-owned businesses in recent years. Powell’s Place, a mom-and-pop soul food spot, shut down in 2007 after 35 years in the neighborhood. Its replacement, Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles, closed in 2014. The space is now home to an Asian fusion restaurant named Fillmore Social Club.

New Chicago Barbershop was an institution on Fillmore for decades before closing in 2013. In its place now is a fast food spot serving poke bowls and sushi burritos. And Marcus Books, once the country’s oldest African American-themed bookstore, shuttered in 2014.

Foster himself closed Blue Jay Cafe in 2014, not far away in the Western Addition on Divisadero.

David Lawrence’s 1300 on Fillmore was a pioneer during the past decade’s efforts to revitalize the neighborhood. It closed in late 2017.

Lawrence’s more casual barbecue spot across the street, Black Bark, closed in January 2018. Isla Vida will take over its storefront at 1325 Fillmore St.

While these businesses have left, they’ve been replaced with a new generation. On the stretch of Fillmore Street south of Geary Boulevard, upscale restaurant State Bird Provisions and burgeoning mini-chains Boba Guys, with its Instagram-friendly matcha lattes, and the Jewish deli outfit Wise Sons have found consistent audiences.

Avery opened in April, serving multicourse tasting menus of either $89 or $189. In May came Merchant Roots, an artisanal market featuring house-made jams, charcuterie and pasta.

“People like us don’t feel like they have a place that’s welcoming in the city,” said Matthew Washington, a co-founder of Isla Vida who grew up in the neighborhood. He said its current state is a textbook example of fallout of aggressive gentrification and displacement.

“I have to tell my friends that this is their city, too,” Washington said. “They shouldn’t feel like they don’t have a place to go.”

But success in the Fillmore is not a given for Isla Vida, and no one knows this better than Lawrence, who closed two restaurants there in the past 12 months.

Both 1300 on Fillmore and Black Bark struggled for several reasons, but Lawrence points to a drop in foot traffic on the southern stretch of the neighborhood after the closure of Yoshi’s, the huge venue and restaurant next door.

“We lost 45 percent of our business when that happened,” Lawrence said. “Owning a restaurant is all about putting bums in seats. We just couldn’t do that with nothing there to bring people to the neighborhood.

“And there wasn’t anything that showed me it was going to get better soon.”

Without any indications that there is a new buyer for the Yoshi’s property, it’s likely that Foster and company will have to navigate similar waters as Lawrence.

Instead of trying to bring people to the neighborhood, however, Isla Vida will try to engage its immediate community.

The path to success, Washington said, is connecting with the audience that has longed called the Fillmore home, efforts that he believes are missing from other new businesses in the area.

Recently the Isla Vida team began a $30,000 fundraising campaign to help supply signage and equipment, including bicycles to bolster the restaurant’s delivery capabilities, an essential revenue stream for a casual restaurant in today’s dining landscape.

The crowdsourcing goal, Foster explained, is for the team to connect with the community it wants to serve — without being beholden to investors.

“Honestly, we could have gone out and found people who wanted to invest, but we didn’t want to run the risk of bringing in people who weren’t aligned with our vision,” Foster said. “Our bigger picture is supporting the community in the Fillmore. And we don’t want anything to get in the way of that.”