Our L.A. food critic’s highly specific guide to San Francisco dining
I’ve never subscribed to the “Los Angeles vs. San Francisco” competitive narratives, the ones that the ones that play off our obviously very different cities with broad, facile stereotypes. My brain fixates on dining cultures, and in some profound ways L.A. and S.F. fit together to fill in the Golden State puzzle. They big-picture complement each other.
A few recent weeks in the Bay Area reminded me of what a culinary marvel San Francisco continues to be.
Its latest generations of chefs, and diners, still produce winding lines for new spins on warming noodle bowls, season-driven pastries and bring-it-on takes of, say, retro Hong Kong-style black pepper steak sizzling on a fajita platter. (See: Four Kings.) Reservations for the most high-flying tasting menus are certainly easier to score post-pandemic, but despite the vagaries of the tech industry and tourism the region endures as the nation’s fine-dining capital. I know, I know, New York, New York: It has the talent but not the mind-blowing produce.
The restaurants in this guide lean into my personal tastes. I have a relationship with San Francisco that spans most of my adulthood, including a brief tenure as a food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle in the mid-2000s. (The current critics, MacKenzie Chung Fegan and L.A. native Cesar Hernandez, are worth the price of a subscription.) When anyone asks my parents about my career choice, they bring up a family vacation to the Bay Area in which they’d planned a week’s worth of activities, but my 16-year-old self mostly wanted to talk to the hotel’s concierge about which great restaurants we should try.
It had been since before 2020 that I had spent real time in San Francisco, and in the wake of the city’s persistent doom-loop storylines I wanted to experience things for myself.
Some aspects were jarring. True to her word, San Francisco Mayor London Breed launched an assertive sweep of homeless encampments through the city. At the end of August, I walked Market Street one evening from the Ferry Building to the Castro and the thoroughfare was empty. Eerily, apocalyptically empty.
Some aspects were as timeless as ever. Walking to early dinners some nights, the fog rolled in fast and low, cutting off the blue sky like a stealth alien force encircling the city.
In acknowledging its many facets, San Francisco remains an exceptional dining town. Rather than chasing all the latest openings, I sought to convey a holistic taste of the abundance, from taquerias to once-in-a-lifetime extravagances. They’re ordered according to my own ambling intuition.
One note: Other corners of the Bay Area, especially Oakland and wine country, deserve their own focused considerations. I’m spending time on the road this year, dining through much of the state, and I’ll have more thoughts on Northern California in the coming months.
Showing Places
(Carolyn Fong / For The Times)
New Cantonese royalty: Four Kings
San Francisco Chinese $$
Pinups of 1990s-era Cantopop gods with big, amazing hair. A crammed dining room full of diners aware of their luck while others wait outside in a line halfway down the block. Servers racing from table to table. A kitchen crew, visible from behind a counter lined with regulars’ sake bottles, banging out plates of popcorn chicken, mapo spaghetti and escargots drenched in an XO compound butter you’ll be slurping out of their shells. Hello from Four Kings, San Francisco’s buzziest opening of the year. Chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long both had childhoods split between China (Ho in Guangdong province, Long in Hong Kong) and California (Ho in San Francisco; Long, whose resume includes Bestia, in Los Angeles). They met on the line at Mister Jiu’s and now run their own Chinatown destination just down the street. Front-of-house ace Millie Boonkokua corrals the restaurant’s crackling energy into a gracious, often fast-paced experience. Order the lacquered, almost livery fried squab with Sichuan spice as soon as you sit down — they run out fast — and then relax into salty-sharp Sichuan cabbage and clay pot rice downright velvety from its double-pork infusion of Chinese sausage and bacon.
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(Carolyn Fong / For The Times)
Cambodian noodles arrive at the Ferry Building: Lunette
Cambodian $$
“K.T.P.P.” reads the name of the first noodle dish listed on the menu of Nite Yun’s new restaurant in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Her fans will know the acronym stands for kuy teav phnom penh, the version of Cambodia’s quintessential noodle soup she introduced in her first restaurant, Nyum Bai, which operated in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood for nearly five years before closing in 2022. I’m so happy she’s back. The pork broth for the soup, as before, simmers for eight hours, given complexity by a subtle addition of dried seafood and plenty of black pepper for a rounded, almost berry-ish spice. The menu is in flux as Yun settles in: Likely there will also be fried chicken over ginger-scallion rice with garlic-chile dipping sauce and chicken stir-fried with an electric mix of lemongrass, galangal and shallots. I’m hoping amok, essentially a curried fish pudding that was a Nyum Bai signature, might make a reappearance at some point. Don’t be deterred by a line when ordering at the counter: It moves fast and tables turn over quickly, particularly at lunch.
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(Carolyn Fong / For The Times)
A dazzling, not-too-long tasting menu: Mijoté
San Francisco French $$$
“Are you going to Mijoté?” asked several knowing San Francisco friends right away when I asked them for recommendations. What put this 2-year-old Mission bistro at the top of their lists? Two of us sat down for dinner and a staffer sidled right up to chat natural wine. While she grabbed a bottle of Arbois made in the Loire Valley, we watched owner Kosuke Tada and his team of chefs line up plates behind the long counter (formerly a sushi bar), dancing around one another with practiced ease as one arranged near-custardy hunks of beef cheek with purple cabbage while another finished garnishing. I got it: the intimacy, the energy, and my God, the cooking that looks to France but sings of California. (The restaurant’s name means “simmered” in French but can also be slang for “drunk.”) Tasting-menu-phobic Angelenos will love the ease and brevity: four nightly-changing courses, $82 per person. Your only decision is whether you want a pre-dessert cheese supplement and, if they haven’t yet run out for the evening, a slice of pâté to start. Chicken leg confit may loll in sauce moutarde; king salmon may be scented with salmon on a Tuesday and piercing pesto on Wednesday. There will always be lush, crusty slices of sourdough by local master Josey Baker Bread.
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(Molly DeCoudreaux)
Dim sum excellence: Hong Kong Lounge Bistro
San Francisco Chinese $$
Some recent Bay Area dim sum thoughts: The finesse that for so long kept Koi Palace in the top tier was missing during my last meal. I find the execution at Dragon Beaux in the Richmond (operated under the growing Koi Palace umbrella of restaurants) far sharper. Yang Sing will always have a place in my heart, but the vitality behind the food isn’t quite what it was. Most important: If you love dim sum, you should be eating at Hong Kong Lounge Bistro.
Four years after Annie Ho’s beloved Hong Kong Lounge II burned down in the Richmond, she resurrected the business in a small SoMa space with translucent windows, carpeting and soothing pinkish walls. It looks and feels like a waiting room for the afterlife. The dim sum is some of the best I’ve had in California. Go for it: textbook shiu mai and har gau, slippery noodle rolls, a nicely unctuous steamed turnip cake in XO sauce, sticky rice in lotus leaf with delicate bits of sausage and other meats. The custard in the dan tat (egg tarts) tasted a little diluted, but that was the only complaint I heard loudly among my table full of hardline Cantonese eaters, some of whom had been put off by the word “bistro” in the new name and had skirted the place. Now they’re converts.
Four years after Annie Ho’s beloved Hong Kong Lounge II burned down in the Richmond, she resurrected the business in a small SoMa space with translucent windows, carpeting and soothing pinkish walls. It looks and feels like a waiting room for the afterlife. The dim sum is some of the best I’ve had in California. Go for it: textbook shiu mai and har gau, slippery noodle rolls, a nicely unctuous steamed turnip cake in XO sauce, sticky rice in lotus leaf with delicate bits of sausage and other meats. The custard in the dan tat (egg tarts) tasted a little diluted, but that was the only complaint I heard loudly among my table full of hardline Cantonese eaters, some of whom had been put off by the word “bistro” in the new name and had skirted the place. Now they’re converts.
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(Oivind Haug)
Italian for a special occasion: Quince
San Francisco Californian $$$$
Michael and Lindsay Tusk have made their California-Italian restaurant a model of tactical, evermore ambitious reinvention. What began in 2003 as the buzzy arrival of a chef with big creds (Michael had worked at two defining East Bay luminaries, Chez Panisse and Oliveto) evolved over two decades and three locations into one of San Francisco’s enduring special-occasion destinations. Lindsay oversaw a recent yearlong renovation of the Jackson Square space, creating a handsome four-seat bar for walk-ins and a reconfigured dining room, full of light woods, rounded corners and earthy shades of pink, green and sandy brown. Among several dining options, the centerpiece 10-course menu costs $390 per person. For a splurge, the investment delivers a sumptuous meal, uplifted by an incredibly warm front-of-house staff, that never feels starchy or overwrought. Dishes change almost nightly: Expect vegetables grown by farmer Peter Martinelli 30 miles away, and pastas with textures so delicate and distinct they will ruinously rewire your benchmarks for excellence, and meats grilled in the hearth, the flavors smoky and concentrated. I had my first experience at Quince nearly 20 years ago, and I’ve never admired the cooking and the design more than in its current iteration.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
Italian for a dream lunch: Cotogna
San Francisco Italian $$$
So Quince sounds amazing, but there’s no way you can blow $1,000 on dinner for two? I will direct you next door to the restaurant’s more casual sibling, Cotogna. Same impeccable standards, same micro-seasonal produce, but with a menu built around pastas and pizzas. Beyond dinner, the restaurant serves lunch Wednesday through Sunday; it is one of my favorite places in America for a daytime meal. A few hallmark dishes: carrot sformato (savory custard) bathed in fonduta, tiny meat-filled agnolotti del plin, a meticulously ridged ricotta raviolo that bleeds egg yolk and one beautifully charred pie crowned with ingredients like lamb sausage and gypsy peppers. The dining room is all rustic coziness, but the tasteful outdoor dining huts built during the pandemic also would be lovely on a sunny afternoon.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A Fillmore District daughter comes home: Minnie Bell's Soul Movement
San Francisco Soul Food $
Rosemary. That’s probably the word that comes to mind for most food obsessives who first crunch into Fernay McPherson’s fried chicken. I remember how the herb gave the bird new woodsy-sweet dimension, but without overpowering its essential pleasure, when McPherson debuted Minnie Bell’s as a stand at the Emeryville Public Market in 2018. Its flavors are even more finely calibrated at her relocated restaurant in the Fillmore District, a historic Black neighborhood where her family has lived for generations. The short menu weaves in a couple of other dinner entrees, including fried fish and roasted chicken, but the fried chicken commands most of the attention. Sides of custardy mac and cheese, capped with a Parmesan crust, and long-simmered, nicely bitter greens create a holy trinity of comforting foods. Along with dinner service Minnie Bell’s is also blessedly open for lunch, instantly making the restaurant a vital new daytime dining option.
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(Carolyn Fong / For The Times)
The state’s great Mexican tasting menu: Californios
San Francisco Mexican $$$
California has precious few fine-dining temples devoted to Mexican cuisine. From a cultural vantage, that reality can put an unduly heavy burden on Val Cantú’s gracious tasting-menu restaurant; it’s one business to meet so many expectations. The restaurant, named after a term for Californians of colonial Spanish and Mexican descent, has grown remarkably in scope and ambition. It began in 2015 in the Mission with a clubby first location full of tufted banquettes and Art Deco chandeliers, and in 2021 moved to a black-box arena of a dining room in SoMa with psychedelic art and balletic service. Heirloom corn masa, much of it from Tierra Vegetables in Santa Rosa, provides the literal base for many dishes and gives the menu shape. A pink Tlaxacaltecan corn varietal called Xocuyul, as one instance, gives an almost fudgy texture to a sope filled with Dungeness crab, red bean mousse and a frilly crown of machaca made from Iberico ham. The sequence of a dozen-plus courses, which culminates in a citrus-bright riff on pescado zarandeado with salsas and fragrant tortillas, satisfies on many levels.
Extra kudos to pastry chef Kelli Huerta, who creates a knockout ending featuring three varieties of strawberries, each in their own form: Seascapes as a duet of raspado (shaved ice) and sorbet; Mara Des Bois, each tasting like a thousand berries concentrated into a single fruit, rightly paired only with vanilla crema; and Chandlers steeped as a soothing, mint-laced tea. It was the best dessert of the whole trip.
Extra kudos to pastry chef Kelli Huerta, who creates a knockout ending featuring three varieties of strawberries, each in their own form: Seascapes as a duet of raspado (shaved ice) and sorbet; Mara Des Bois, each tasting like a thousand berries concentrated into a single fruit, rightly paired only with vanilla crema; and Chandlers steeped as a soothing, mint-laced tea. It was the best dessert of the whole trip.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A stunning taste of Kerala: Copra
San Francisco Indian $$
The cuisine of Kerala, India’s southwestern-most state culturally influenced by its millennia as a center of maritime spice trade, has a special place for me: One of my close friends, chef and cookbook author Asha Gomez, grew up in the region. So I was immediately drawn in by the surgical nuance with which veteran San Francisco chef Srijith Gopinathan, who is also from Kerala, imagines his dishes at airy, plant-filled Copra. Take the pork belly, paired with a fruit called kudampuli, and sometimes known as Malabar tamarind, that’s specific to South India. As a seasoning it’s smoked first and the flavor, tart and as intense as campfire blowing on your face, is most commonly used in fish curries. But Gopinathan marries kudampuli brilliantly with the pork, tempering its edge with garlic, ginger and not-too-fiery green chiles. I could go on similarly about the crab in coconut, the spiced fried chicken, the breads made from fermented rice batter and coconut milk called appam, the coiled Kerala-style paratha, the fine-tuning of the chutneys. California has well-established Indian immigrant communities — the Sunnyvale area of the South Bay and Artesia south of Los Angeles among them — where it’s easiest to find regional specialties. But for South Indian cooking in a finer-dining context, I don’t know of a better restaurant that exists in the state.
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(Pete Lee)
An evolution of Cantonese cooking: Mister Jiu's
San Francisco Chinese $$$
Brandon Jew is only the third tenant to occupy 28 Waverly Place, a building constructed in Chinatown in the 1880s. He can recall inhaling longevity noodles as a kid at Four Seas, the previous occupant and one of the community’s once-thriving banquet halls. Last decade Jew spent three years renovating the interior, creating a Midcentury Modern set piece and accenting the dreamscape view of Commercial Street. No matter where you sit, take a moment to politely slip past tables to stand at the window, gazing past neighborhood stalwarts like Eastern Bakery to pastel buildings and, if the fog allows, all the way to the Ferry Building clock tower and San Francisco Bay.
Jew’s aim for the restaurant has always been to reinterpret the Cantonese cuisine of his youth. He’s experimented with form over the years, currently landing on a tasting menu that, during my late-summer dinner, included courses like eel clay pot rice lightened with summer squash and an outstanding guinea hen roulade in chicken broth so vivid in its poultry essence that the mind goes still between spoonfuls. An urging: Pre-order a supplemental course of Peking-style roast duck. It’s generous in size, the bird’s skin gleamingly lacquered, and comes with genius sides of peanut butter hoisin and whipped duck liver mousse.
Jew’s aim for the restaurant has always been to reinterpret the Cantonese cuisine of his youth. He’s experimented with form over the years, currently landing on a tasting menu that, during my late-summer dinner, included courses like eel clay pot rice lightened with summer squash and an outstanding guinea hen roulade in chicken broth so vivid in its poultry essence that the mind goes still between spoonfuls. An urging: Pre-order a supplemental course of Peking-style roast duck. It’s generous in size, the bird’s skin gleamingly lacquered, and comes with genius sides of peanut butter hoisin and whipped duck liver mousse.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
The Eastern Mediterranean meets California: Dalida
San Francisco Mediterranean $$
Against a background of green space, with the bay in open view, Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz’s Eastern Mediterranean restaurant resides in the former mess hall of the Presidio’s iconic red-brick Montgomery Street Barracks built in 1895. Their cooking more than stands up to the dazzling location. Though the menu dips into the lexicons of Lebanon, Cyprus and Iran, the dishes most prominently center Sayat’s Turkish heritage. Start with Istanbul-style mussels stuffed with dill-scented rice and currants, and a stunning dish of grilled octopus sliced into rounds, laid out in circles on a platter and splotched with nduja-like pork sujuk and olive-caper dressing. Lamb, the region’s essential meat, sees its rightful shine in tiny manti layered in tomato and yogurt sauces and a powerhouse entree of lamb chop sheathed in spiced ground lamb and caul fat over hummus. Gata, an Armenian tea cake, is reconfigured as a tart of almond and mahleb (a spice made from the seeds of sour cherry) and served with whatever sumptuous California fruit happens to be in season. Let wine director Ruth Frey steer you toward varietals from Greece, Armenia, Georgia and maybe even farther afield.
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(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Palestinian comfort food: Beit Rima
San Francisco Palestinian $$
In 2019 Samir Mogannam started taking over locations of the local BurgerMeister chain founded two decades ago by his father, Paul. Renaming the restaurants for his mother, Rima (“beit” means “house” in Arabic), he began serving gently recalibrated versions of his family’s Palestinian and Jordanian recipes. Pita comes on the side of the mezze sampler, with its whirl of creamy dips and bright-green falafel, but it’s worth the extra $5 to order “Samir’s hand kneaded bread,” a swell of crackling dough covered with za’atar and sumac. For more substantial plates, look to the Gazan-style lamb shank submerged in spiced tomato and pepper sauce. Scoop to the bottom of the bowl to retrieve the maftoul — hand-rolled Palestinian pearls of pasta made from whole wheat and bulgur. His take on samak bil tahineh presents a whole, beautifully fried branzino surrounded by tarator (lemony tahini sauce), shutta (red chile sauce) and herb-onion salad. Of the two Beit Rima outposts, I gravitate to the smaller, quieter space in the lovely Cole Valley neighborhood.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Transcendent ramen: Noodle in a Haystack
San Francisco Japanese $$$
The most impossible reservation in San Francisco right now is arguably an unmarked storefront with a white brick façade and a determinedly stark interior at the end of a block in the Inner Richmond. Yoko and Clint Tan, self-taught hobbyists turned adept chefs, transformed their ramen pop-ups into a counter tasting-menu experience that seats 12 customers nightly. Sculptural starters like a caviar-topped savory financier and a genius “hot and sour” chawanmushi keep you rapt, but you wait all evening for the noodles. When they arrive — as mine did in a take on abura soba remade in the image of carbonara, and then a showstopping shio butter clam ramen enriched with corn, Hokkaido scallop, a slice of cured chashu that crossed over into ham and many other intricate, essential ingredients — you will feel intoxicated. Honestly, the clam number might be the finest bowl of ramen I’ve had in the United States. I wish it wasn’t so hard to go back and be certain.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Modern Korean cuisine from a chef’s chef: Benu
San Francisco Asian $$$$
Nearly 15 years ago Corey Lee splintered notions of Western tasting menus when he opened his serene SoMa restaurant. Born in Korea and raised in New Jersey, he felt pulled to fine dining at an early age, working through high temples in London and New York before spending nine years with Thomas Keller, eventually becoming chef de cuisine at the French Laundry. Lee took Keller’s playbook — taking white American clichés like mac and cheese or peas and carrots and reconstructing them using Escoffier’s techniques and California’s plenty — and made it his own, devising a haute third-culture cuisine that ennobled Korean, Chinese and Japanese flavors using the same approach. At my first meal there, I’ll never forget an opening riff on siu mai, a dumpling of pork belly, diced kimchi and a tiny oyster in a glassy wrapper made from kimchi broth set with hydrocolloids. It shattered against the teeth. It smashed expectations.
In the mid-2020s New York’s fanciest “Korean wave” restaurants help set the tone for the city’s high-end dining scene, and Los Angeles has upstarts like Baroo and Yangban. Lee no longer stands alone, but his cooking has matured: less blatant modernism, more emphasis on Korean dishes. Small presentations like a two-bite toast of Pacific anchovy with house-fermented tomato ssamjang lead to a finale of ginseng-poached quail, its skin rendered to amber, served with flawless rice fragrant with green onion and sides that include salted shrimp salsa. I hear rumblings sometimes that Lee’s technically rigorous food comes off too subtle on the palate. In my handful of dinners at Benu over the last decade, I’ve never come away from his singular show of intellect and identity feeling anything less than inspired.
In the mid-2020s New York’s fanciest “Korean wave” restaurants help set the tone for the city’s high-end dining scene, and Los Angeles has upstarts like Baroo and Yangban. Lee no longer stands alone, but his cooking has matured: less blatant modernism, more emphasis on Korean dishes. Small presentations like a two-bite toast of Pacific anchovy with house-fermented tomato ssamjang lead to a finale of ginseng-poached quail, its skin rendered to amber, served with flawless rice fragrant with green onion and sides that include salted shrimp salsa. I hear rumblings sometimes that Lee’s technically rigorous food comes off too subtle on the palate. In my handful of dinners at Benu over the last decade, I’ve never come away from his singular show of intellect and identity feeling anything less than inspired.
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(Eric Wolfinger)
Cutting-edge Korean barbecue: San Ho Won
San Francisco Korean $$$
Beyond his flagship Benu, Corey Lee has helmed other San Francisco projects over the years, including a French bistro called Monsieur Benjamin and his experimental In Situ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, both closed. But in November 2021 he opened a venture he’d been tinkering on for years: his interpretation of a Korean barbecue restaurant. Lee, along with chef de cuisine and partner Jeong-In Hwang, set San Ho Won in a handsomely stark space at the edge of the Mission near Potrero Hill. Hwang and his team grill meats (double-thick galbi, rib-eye cap, velvety beef tongue that arrives in burger-shaped rounds) over lychee wood charcoal; they prepare everything in the kitchen, forgoing the usual tabletop interaction. The lettuces and chile-spiked sauces for ssam-style wrapping are impeccable, with a California fantasy sort of freshness and brightness. That goes for starters and sides too, including gyeranjjim that billows into the form of an egg souffle; a staffer scoops it into bowls tableside and then ladles an anchovy broth over it. Sublime.
Could Los Angeles, such a bastion of traditional and casual Korean cooking, be ready for a similarly outside-the-box vision of KBBQ? It would take the right talent, right location, right timing. Lee and Hwang have given California one blueprint for possibilities.
Could Los Angeles, such a bastion of traditional and casual Korean cooking, be ready for a similarly outside-the-box vision of KBBQ? It would take the right talent, right location, right timing. Lee and Hwang have given California one blueprint for possibilities.
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(Rasami Storm)
Amazing, but don’t call it “Hawaiian:” Liholiho Yacht Club
San Francisco Asian Eclectic $$
Over the bar of Ravi Kapur’s Lower Nob Hill restaurant hangs a picture of his mother in Oahu in 1976. The camera captured a moment where she’s looking off in the distance, young and grinning and eyes full of joy. Kapur told me a decade ago that the exhilaration on her face symbolizes his hospitality philosophy — an “aloha spirit.” The menu takes inspiration from Kapur’s Chinese-Indian-Hawaiian heritage, but labels are slippery. Best to show up and trust, beginning with the cocktails fueled by pineapple, coconut and maraschino that teeter at the edge of tiki. Steamed buns filled originally with Spam now cradle tender slabs of beef tongue (an improvement). One winning order: tuna poke over nori crackers; shaved pig head salad (particularly dazzling at summer’s end matched with just-ripe nectarines and watermelon); a pot of lamb rendang covered with turmeric-stained naan; and the cheeky “Baked Hawaii” for dessert, though you could also honor Kapur’s mother by ordering the butter mochi in coconut custard based on her recipe.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
An artist in residence: Atelier Crenn
San Francisco French $$$$
A server glides over with a domed ceramic pot in her hands. She sets it down and lifts the glass lid; a dry-ice fog ripples out, dissipating to reveal a tableau of leaves and flowers. Among the fauna sits a tartlet, its shell made from Koshihikari rice, filled with Dungeness crab sauteed in coconut oil, sparked with Fresno chiles and finished with avocado and an astonishingly silky lentil cream. A single bite, a moment of euphoria and then it’s on to the next delicious bit of theater.
Dominique Crenn is a force — of nature, of artistry, of personality — and she’s kept her Cow Hollow mothership in a flow of creative self-discovery since opening in 2011. From a basic description you probably know if you’re in or out with Crenn: The menu, written as a poem, orbits around seafood and vegetables, and dinner unfolds as a series of small courses. The price is $395 per person. From a critical vantage, what I’ve always admired about Crenn is the happy medium she achieves between modernism (a gushing cocoa butter shell filled with a play on a Kir Breton cocktail kicks off dinner) and low-to-the-ground locavorism (the restaurant maintains a farm), between cerebral leaps and undisguised pleasure. Her secret weapon has long been her business partner and pastry chef Juan Contreras. He matched her crab tart, for example, with a finale tostada made from rice, potato and masa, which he brushed with a coconut-based laminate to protect the crunch from layers of pistachio cream and raspberries that tasted of roses. This is also the rare restaurant in which the nonalcoholic pairing of teas and other potions are as interesting as the wines.
Dominique Crenn is a force — of nature, of artistry, of personality — and she’s kept her Cow Hollow mothership in a flow of creative self-discovery since opening in 2011. From a basic description you probably know if you’re in or out with Crenn: The menu, written as a poem, orbits around seafood and vegetables, and dinner unfolds as a series of small courses. The price is $395 per person. From a critical vantage, what I’ve always admired about Crenn is the happy medium she achieves between modernism (a gushing cocoa butter shell filled with a play on a Kir Breton cocktail kicks off dinner) and low-to-the-ground locavorism (the restaurant maintains a farm), between cerebral leaps and undisguised pleasure. Her secret weapon has long been her business partner and pastry chef Juan Contreras. He matched her crab tart, for example, with a finale tostada made from rice, potato and masa, which he brushed with a coconut-based laminate to protect the crunch from layers of pistachio cream and raspberries that tasted of roses. This is also the rare restaurant in which the nonalcoholic pairing of teas and other potions are as interesting as the wines.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A great definition of “Modern Californian:” The Progress
San Francisco Californian $$$
At their first restaurant, State Bird Provisions, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski most famously stoked a national trend for cart service early last decade, parroting the presentation of small plates they’d seen at dim sum parlors throughout the Bay Area. In 2015 they opened the Progress next door, named for a theater once housed in the space that closed a century ago, channeling 1980s fern bar vibes that remind me of watching “L.A. Law” as a kid. Both restaurants nail the “modern California” tenets (local meats and vegetables, global-minded techniques and seasonings that make sense on the plate), but the cooking at the Progress has a slightly lighter touch I find persuasive. Servers will advise you to start with the caviar potato cloud — and it is a fun couple of spoonfuls, at once rich and weightless — before shareables from chef de cuisine Hans Lund and his team like blue corn masa dumplings with huitlacoche crema; a nourishing quartet of grilled pole beans, crisp tofu, hearts of palm and citrus-spritzed avocado; and guinea hen schnitzel with ham, Taleggio cheese and some Hungarian wax peppers for levity. Your S.F. friends will probably ask if you had the off-menu hot dog, pummeled with kimchi and bonito flakes, served only at the bar. Go early (they only make 12 per night) so you can answer yes.
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(Sori Mosquera)
A still-vital Moroccan institution: Aziza
San Francisco Californian Moroccan $$
Between Mourad Lahlou’s two Moroccan-California restaurants, I’ve always considered the bigger, glitzier Mourad in SoMa as the expense-account choice and his original, quirkier Aziza in the Richmond as the locals’ hang. Aziza has been open, in fits and starts, since 2001, and I can cop to some nostalgia: I had great dates here, one memorable dinner with a close friend days before she gave birth to her first child and meals, early in its run, where I remember studiously absorbing Lahlou’s synapse-connecting ways with North African flavors. Gather a group in the recently refreshed dining room, where Moroccan lamps softly illuminate its clean lines and geometric tiles. Share a feast of grilled squid over hand-rolled couscous, with merguez vinaigrette adding its rumbling spice; lamb shank paired with molten prunes and buttery celery root puree; Lahlou’s signature bisteeya encasing braised chicken and ground almonds; and salmon tagine given a one-two punch by red chermoula and preserved lemon. Regulars know that the pan of warm corn bread, glossy with harissa butter, is an improbable and yet must-order side.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
An amazing primer on Guamanian cooking: Prubechu
San Francisco Chamorro $$
Filed under one of the S.F. restaurants that I do wish existed instead in L.A.: Shawn Naputi and Shawn Camacho’s heartening, edifying Guamanian restaurant that celebrates their Chamorro culture. A sedate dining room leads to an outdoor space, almost shockingly spacious in the heart of the Mission, rife with plants and tables covered in colorful cloths printed with chiles and tropical flowers. The menu is full of phonetic spellings of Chamorro words with which many of us may not be familiar. For the largely Guamanian staff, that’s exactly the point — an entryway into a conversation. They’ll steer you to lemony, ceviche-like chicken kelaguen under a snowdrift of grated coconut; branzino, smeared with turmeric and garlic, fried and laid over sauteed cabbage and yu choi; roasted Japanese yams paired with coconut-creamed spinach and sharpened with caramelized soy sauce; and tinaktak (braised beef tangled with egg noodles). Brunch has a similar menu, though be sure to add an order of the tall, feathery sweet rolls served alongside butter whipped with coconut vinegar.
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(Adahlia Cole)
Thai finer dining: Kin Khao
San Francisco Thai $$
In Los Angeles we have such an abundance of culinary Thai greatness, but Pim Techamuanvivit’s restaurant wedged into one corner of the Parc 55 hotel near San Francisco’s Union Square deserves a mention. Kin Khao delivers Thai flavors in their maximalist grandeur, while leaning into plating and presentations that border finer dining. It’s a compelling style for disappearing into plah pla muek (Monterey grilled squid in a sauce shimmering with garlic, fish sauce and palm sugar) and rabbit in an enveloping green curry. Dinner service showcases the broadest and fiercest options, though when I’m in the area I’m always thankful for the khao soi or five-spice duck noodle soup available at lunch.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
An essential Bay Area izakaya: Rintaro
San Francisco Japanese $$
By way of a standard-setting California izakaya that squares tradition and innovation, Los Angeles has Tsubaki and San Francisco has Rintaro. With the help of his father, a carpenter, Kyoto-born Sylvan Mishima Brackett created a dining room that includes booths made from reclaimed redwood wine casks and a cedar counter made by hand. The setting helps pull in a sense of serenity when the place is full and bustling (which is most of the time). In the manner of izakaya, order dishes that express a gamut of cooking methods: grilled duck breast over peppery chrysanthemum greens, rolled omelet with the soft oceanic flavor of dashi, smoky-fluffy tsukune and Brackett’s exceptional udon, served either in broth or tossed in butter and eggy as a playful carbonara. My longtime Rintaro vice: panko-crusted torikatsu that with every forkful oozes a molten layer of cider-washed cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in Petaluma.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Super-spicy Northern-style Chinese: Old Mandarin Islamic Restaurant
San Francisco Chinese Halal $$
Way back in 2006 I reviewed Feng Wang and Xuqun Yang’s now-institution in the Outer Sunset, one of the few places in San Francisco (or California) to focus on Northern-style Chinese Muslim culinary traditions. I had zeroed in on the dish listed as No. 29, called “extremely hot pepper” on the English menu, a Christmas-colored carnage of beef and egg stir-fried with chopped fresh and green chiles that was so unrelentingly hot my friend Deno had tears streaming down his face. A recent return visit found the dish maintained the same number, and the capsicums were as merciless as ever. Nearly 20 years later, I admittedly find less delight in spice masochism, focusing instead on Beijing-style hot pot served in a copper vessel, and lamb scented with the rounded flavors of Chinese cumin, and Wang’s pillowy dumplings filled with gingered meat.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Timeless elegance: Acquerello
San Francisco Italian $$$$
I spent plenty of time recently in San Francisco thinking about how higher-end restaurants must keep morphing to stay relevant for the wealthy and the food-obsessed. Acquerello is the rare exception that succeeds by largely staying the same. Chef and owner Suzette Gresham and co-founder Giancarlo Paterlini opened on Nob Hill in 1989. The color scheme is mustard and burnt orange. The tone is hushed. Kind-eyed servers read moods at the table and improve them, even if everyone is already feeling celebrational. In such a broken, terrible world, I hesitate to describe any place as “romantic,” but that’s the spell of its time-capsule charm. The food and the encyclopedic wine program are Italian. Because of course beautiful pasta — ruffled creste di galli filled with artichoke and stracciatella, farfalle in oxtail ragu with morels, caponata-stuffed mezzelune — can weather the decades and defy the odds. I remember a cheese cart years ago; now there’s an addition to the prix-fixe menu called “An unusual selection of Italian cheeses and condiments.” It still speaks my love language. As does suave Paterlini when he asks if we have transportation home, or if he could call a taxi for us. Thank you, sir, but our Waymo will be here in three minutes.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
Ideal picnic hoagies: Palm City
San Francisco Wine Bars $$
One jaw-unhinging bite into Palm City’s roasted pork hoagie — with its precise strata of shaved meat, forthrightly bitter broccoli raab and sliced provolone — and I knew someone in charge was from Philadelphia. The construct was an overt, loving ode to the city’s iconic cheesesteak stand John’s Roast Pork. Dennis Cantwell is the Philadelphian; he and Monica Wong run the restaurant and natural-leaning wine shop they opened at the cusp of the pandemic. Their airy Outer Sunset space has plenty of indoor and outdoor seating. It’s also seven blocks from the beach, so I’m partial to carrying out a picnic that includes a chopped salad and, in addition to the roast pork, a shrimp salad hoagie with the sneaky crunch of salt-and-vinegar potato chips slipped into its layers.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Savory pastry marvels: Maison Nico
San Francisco French Bakery $
There would be nothing wrong with swinging by Nicolas Delaroque’s gorgeously tiled Financial District épicerie to grab a chestnut croissant and a brown butter-chocolate chip cookie, taking them outside to eat at a soft-pink sidewalk table while staring up at the Transamerica Pyramid. I arrive at lunchtime for the pâté en croûte, Delaroque’s truest marvels. He fashions mosaics out of minced meats, fruits and nuts and frames them in pastry. Digging a fork into a slice of duck and chicken pâté, studded with pistachios for crunch and cherries and golden raisins for chew, one can practically taste the labor that goes into these showpieces. The California ethos has clearly gripped Delaroque’s imagination. His creations never stagnate. The transition between summer and fall might see a tomato-enriched variation, warm with smoked paprika, alongside a combination of pork and duck paired with apple and scented with baking spices. Staffers warm each serving (sold by the pound) and garnish plates with tufts of salad tossed in a bitingly acidic vinaigrette. Nothing more is needed for a wildly satisfying lunch.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Your Arab corner bakery: Reem's Mission
San Francisco Arabic Bakery $$
To eat at Reem Assil’s sun-drenched cafe in the Mission District, a business modeled on the traditions of Arab corner bakeries, is to know the crackle and tang of the flatbreads, crowned perhaps with asparagus in spring or charred corn in the summer, and how the season’s fruits find their way among the typical greens and fried pita in fattoush. Wonderful any time of year: the thin, pliant man’oushe spread with fragrant za’atar. If you’ve heard of Assil, you’re likely aware the Palestinian Syrian chef, a former labor and community organizer, brings far more to her profession than superb baking skills. Beyond converting Reem’s to a worker-owned model in an effort to upend hierarchical food industry models, Assil has the courage to be outspoken on many topics: among them Palestinian rights and the intersection of food and social justice. Her cookbook “Arabiyya” is a beautiful extension of her restaurant’s philosophy; after a piece or two of her walnut ba’laawa (or baklava, reclaimed from the Greek kitchen) perfumed with orange blossom for dessert, you will want the recipe.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Yes, stand in line for these pastries: Breadbelly
San Francisco Bakery $
Katherine Campecino-Wong, James Wong, Clement Hsu and their staff craft many detailed delights, both sweet and savory, at their always-busy 5-year-old bakery in the Richmond. But most of us come, at least on a first visit, for the famous kaya toast. Coconut jam, squiggled over milk bread, has been infused with pandan, turning the color to avocado-green and imprinting flavors of vanilla and toasted rice. Its fame is earned. Stick around, though, for the omelet-filled biscuit sandwich dripping with American cheese and tomato jam; the crazily smart riff on an arancino made with sticky rice and stuffed with Chinese sausage and Fontina; and the almond-scented crumb cake baked with boozy Luxardo-style cherries and Morello cherry jam. Arriving later in the afternoon to avoid crowds means a whole lot might be sold out … but there will still be kaya toast.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Croissant heaven: Arsicault Bakery
San Francisco Bakery $
The backstory for Arsicault was irresistible. After years of working in finance, Armando Lacayo traded in his desk job to pursue his weekend hobby of mastering the croissants and viennoiserie he remembered from his childhood in France. A year after it quietly opened in the Richmond in 2015, in a 1,500-square-foot space with room for little more than a kitchen and a display counter, Bon Appétit editors named Arsicault the best new bakery in America. Throngs descended; waits became as legendary as the pastries. Nearly a decade later, things have mellowed. It takes only a few minutes, particularly mid-morning, before you are inside, choosing between a dozen or so options. The plain croissant is Parisian-level textbook: bronzed on the outside, somewhere between flaky and stretchy inside, with a flavor that dissolves to sweet butter. My favorite variation adds generous layers of melty chocolate and dense almond paste. To complete the trilogy: a swirling, shattering kouign amann.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A cocktail gamechanger: True Laurel
San Francisco Cocktails $$
If I had to pinpoint one favorite destination for cocktails in San Francisco? Seven years ago chef David Barzelay followed his success at tasting-menu-cum-dinner-party restaurant Lazy Bear by partnering with his bartender, Nicolas Torres, on True Laurel at the eastern edge of the Mission District. Torres is an artist of spirits and tinctures. He’ll unite mezcal and melon in a common-sense pairing, and then throw in notes of aloe, shiso and dill, and it works in ways both familiar and startling. On a list of 14 or so drinks, expect the same complex thinking applied to a couple of nonalcoholic cocktails, a rarity. Barzelay matches the beverage program with a short menu of equally brainy comfort foods, including a baked potato loaded with “hot cheddar” and red miso butter and a fluttering crown of katsuobushi flakes. Global accolades keep flying at True Laurel and prime-time reservations can be challenging. Local writer Virginia Miller gave me a great tip: Go for some day-drinking at brunch, when the place is unusually calm, and when you can also order the dinner menu’s signature dry-aged patty melt pressed between slices of pain de mie griddled with beef fat.
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Turkish, plus amazing wine: Kitchen Istanbul
San Francisco Turkish $$$
A recent search for excellent doner kebab in Los Angeles reminded me that the Bay Area has far more Turkish restaurants than does Southern California. When Emrah Kilicoglu opened Kitchen Istanbul in 2013, it quickly settled in as a friendly neighborhood option for Eastern Mediterranean cooking in the Richmond: sumac-dusted lamb kebabs, shrimp and shishito peppers sparked with garlic-paprika butter, minted zucchini fritters with feta. But there’s more to the story. Like many restaurateurs, during the pandemic Kilicoglu pivoted to retail, and his long-simmering interest in wine boiled over. Within a year the restaurant was a darling of the industry, with off-duty chefs and staffers filling tables full of cultish, reasonably priced white Burgundies, Chenin Blancs and Rieslings. Wine director Joseph DiGrigoli, whose previous gigs include Cotogna, joined Kilicoglu’s staff in February to steer the list. He’s the kind of dream sommelier who spouts few flowery adjectives and almost reads your mind when narrowing down options. This is a lovely place to eat, but a spectacular place to drink and eat.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
For pourover geeks: Coffee Movement
San Francisco Coffee $
Coffee in San Francisco is such a deep and vast subject onto itself that I will offer only one recommendation directed to my fellow pour-over geeks: The craftsmanship at Coffee Movement warrants seeking out no matter where in town in you might be. The second, larger location in the Richmond usually has a queue, predictably short on weekdays and longer on weekends, but the staff maintains absorbed focus on each drink. Coffee brewed in a Hario V-60, often by superior international roasters such as Manhattan out of the Netherlands, is about as expressive a cup as I’ve had in a shop. (Jack Benchakul’s mastery is the only Los Angeles equivalent I know.) Baristas will also serve one great coffee three ways, as a pour-over, an espresso and a milk-based drink. The original location at the edge of Chinatown is tiny, with a smaller menu, but I love its espresso tonic jolted with lemon.
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(Song Tea )
For serious tea drinkers: Song Tea & Ceramics
San Francisco Teahouse $$$
Peter Luong’s family opened a tea shop in Chinatown when he was a teenager in the mid-1980s, and in 2013 he branched off to begin his own more intently curated business. He spends part of each year traveling through China and Taiwan, seeking out exceptional varieties of greens, whites, oolongs, reds (what we call black tea in the West) and aged finds for his collection of several dozen paragons. Luong has a particular knack for finding charcoal-roasted oolongs from the Fujian province that mellow into complex sweetness after several rounds of steeping. Purchase teas at the tranquil storefront in the Lower Pacific Heights, and look out for the monthly “Quiet Mornings at Song” events, booked via Tock, in which Luong brews and talks through the nuances of several teas over a couple of hours. Tea is an obsession of mine, and this is one of two specialists on the West Coast where I’m a devoted customer. (The other is Tea Habitat in Alhambra.)
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
One burrito to rule them all: La Taqueria
San Francisco Mexican $
It would be wonderful, on the subject of the Mission-style taqueria, if I had some arcane, down-a-back-alley-every-other-Thursday revelation to share with you about the perfect burrito in San Francisco. I tried that for the Chronicle in 2006, when I ate literally hundreds of burritos over 10 weeks and documented the quest. After all that, I wound up top-ranking La Taqueria, already the most lauded burrito specialist on the West Coast. Sure, other greats abide (including the Mission location of Taqueria El Farolito a block away), but start with Miguel Jara’s 51-year-old star frontrunner to gauge the landscape. The star order: a carne asada burrito, which famously omits the rice typical to a Bay Area burrito, leaving more room for smoky beef, near-liquid cheese, guacamole, pinto beans and additions of salsa fresca and hot sauce. Ask for the burrito dorado-style, so it lands in your hands golden and crisp from the plancha. Some people will tell you the tacos are even better. I don’t agree, but order away. You’re here to add your own opinion to the grand collective.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A restaurant that matters to me forever: Zuni Café
San Francisco European $$
“Are you including Zuni?” a young food writer friend sighed at me. “It seems like the kind of entry where people will just go, ‘Oh, yeah, OK’ and gloss over it.” I did not have a fast zinger retort, and still don’t. I told him simply that Zuni Café, in operation for 45 years now, still holds significance to a lot of people, and they might wonder about its continued value in the community. Something about the space feels eternal: the glass windows across its triangulated angles, the standing copper bar, the carefully chosen art, the see-and-be-seen staircase that connects to the more secluded second floor.
Eating here, particularly during lunch on an overcast afternoon, can almost feel haunted, as if the emotions felt by patrons through the decades seeped into the walls and want to slowly bleed back out. Sipping vermouth feels right and civilized in its rooms.
Judy Rodgers codified the restaurant’s style through the 1990s, marrying impeccable produce and pedigreed meats with gentle borrowings primarily from the Italian and French repertoires. Rodgers died of cancer in 2013; Anne Alvero, the latest chef to run the kitchen, took over in 2022. In MacKenzie Chung Fegan’s recent assessment of Zuni for the Chronicle, she pronounced the legendary roast chicken “good,” and impossible to live up to its reputation, and I agree. I’m still deeply charmed by the bowl of polenta (I ask for both mascarpone and Parmesan, rather than choosing one, and the kind, aproned servers indulge me), and revolving entrees like roasted duck leg with dates and pancetta, and the silly, joyful pyramid of shoestring potatoes.
We need physical places, more than ever, that can be backgrounds and vessels for meaning in our lives. I have really loved four men in my life, and Zuni Café is the only restaurant in my food-focused existence where I have shared a meal with each of them over two decades. The most recent was last year. You can guess, then, where I stand on the topic of whether this icon continues to matter.
Eating here, particularly during lunch on an overcast afternoon, can almost feel haunted, as if the emotions felt by patrons through the decades seeped into the walls and want to slowly bleed back out. Sipping vermouth feels right and civilized in its rooms.
Judy Rodgers codified the restaurant’s style through the 1990s, marrying impeccable produce and pedigreed meats with gentle borrowings primarily from the Italian and French repertoires. Rodgers died of cancer in 2013; Anne Alvero, the latest chef to run the kitchen, took over in 2022. In MacKenzie Chung Fegan’s recent assessment of Zuni for the Chronicle, she pronounced the legendary roast chicken “good,” and impossible to live up to its reputation, and I agree. I’m still deeply charmed by the bowl of polenta (I ask for both mascarpone and Parmesan, rather than choosing one, and the kind, aproned servers indulge me), and revolving entrees like roasted duck leg with dates and pancetta, and the silly, joyful pyramid of shoestring potatoes.
We need physical places, more than ever, that can be backgrounds and vessels for meaning in our lives. I have really loved four men in my life, and Zuni Café is the only restaurant in my food-focused existence where I have shared a meal with each of them over two decades. The most recent was last year. You can guess, then, where I stand on the topic of whether this icon continues to matter.
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