Quintessential Good Eats from San Francisco’s Food Scene

By Christina Mueller

With 55 Michelin-starred restaurants, the San Francisco food scene is chockfull of interesting and noteworthy eats. Since the Gold Rush years, when miners sought meals that showed off their new wealth, San Francisco nurtured a mix of fancy and everyday restaurants. These restaurants brought the best of the Golden State, and the world, to the city by the bay. The city’s unique climate, and the array of agricultural products grown near the city, also plays a part. After all, this is a city known as much for its bread as its commitment to farm-to-table. From haute Italian and Mexican to road-trip-worthy Thai or sushi and some of the best burritos on this side of Mexicali, San Francisco is a food destination in its own right. Here’s what to eat.

Classic San Francisco Dishes for All

Fisherman’s Wharf is mocked by the locals for the kitschy vibe and endless sweatshirt shops (tourists forget about the city’s chilly summer fog). But it is the place to eat one of San Francisco’s most iconic dishes: cioppino. Its components taken from the leftovers of the day’s catch, usually calamari and squid, cioppino is at its best at Alioto’s. It is not a long walk to Boudin at the Wharf, where, in 1849, the alchemy of San Francisco fog and local yeasts yielded a new bread called sourdough.

In the Financial District, you can still get a Hangtown fry at Tadich Grill. The 100 percent Californian dish was, in the 1840s, a gold miner’s most expensive meal of oysters, bacon, and eggs (it was a sky-high $6 for the dish back then, a luxury few could afford). And an order of crab cakes featuring local Dungeness crab has an appeal so enduring, the dish is on restaurant menus all over town.

Hi-Lo Mexican Cuisine

Though the Mission District was once mostly Irish, the more recent wave of Mexican and Latin American residents means some of the best Mexican food is to be found in this neighborhood. Everyone must try California’s most famous culinary invention, the burrito, as any exploration of the San Francisco food scene is incomplete without it. Known locally as a Mission-style burrito, it is large and in charge, stuffed with enough rice, beans, and meat to feed a small family for days. Try it at Pancho Villa Taqueria and thank us later. A few blocks southwest, two-star Michelin Californios is reimagining border cuisine.

Farm-to-Table Is Always a Thing

Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA), confirmed the commitment of Bay Area restaurants to serving meals with outstanding ingredients. “Everyone talks about farm-to-table, but we’ve been doing it for so long, we don’t even talk about it anymore,” Borden said. “We are so close to agriculture and we have a robust farmer’s market culture, restaurant goers are looking for that fresh taste.”

That said, should you wish to experience farm-to-table, seek out any restaurant in the Daniel Patterson Group, where farm-to-table is built into each restaurant’s DNA. Alta celebrates California cuisine with seasonally inspired dishes that feature local ingredients such as Dungeness crab porridge with egg-yolk confit. Alta’s is dressed with jalapeño-daikon slaw and aioli. “Everyone has a fried-chicken sandwich these days,” Borden noted. “It transcends perceptions.” With a nod, perhaps, to the paleo movement, Borden also noted that “eggs are on and in everything.” At Aster, a soft-cooked egg with nori, puffed rice, and bacon is an option on the four-course tasting menu. For a peek at the origins of California cuisine, head across the bay to Berkeley, the home of Chez Panisse. It was here that Alice Waters kickstarted a revolution in how Americans ate, in the Bay Area and everywhere. Patterson and every other chef who cooks farm-to-table stands in Waters’s long shadow.

Asian Flavors Are Always in Fashion

Situated on the Pacific Rim, San Francisco embraces the flavors of Asia (and beyond). Experience new Hawaiian cuisine such as charred-octopus luau with kalo cream and vadouvan roasted almonds at ‘āina in Dogpatch or go for the ultimate Hawaiian comfort food, poke, in a bowl at Blue Hawaii Acai Cafe (you guessed it, the açai trend came to California from Hawaii) in the FiDi or at Poki Time in the Marina.

While Chinese food has been a part of the San Francisco food scene since the years of building the transcontinental railroad, the popularity of dumplings has expanded far beyond Chinatown. Dumpling Time in Potrero Hill has countless regional variations, but do try the King-Dum Xiao Long Bao. It is so big, it comes with its own straw for slurping up the scorching-hot soup inside. SoMa is home to the larger of Yank Sing’s two locations. Its 100 varieties of dim sum, many of them dumplings, make a stop here a must when seeking out the heart of the San Francisco food scene.

But San Francisco’s Asian food scene is not limited by history. The city plays host to every sort of Asian cuisine. This includes micro Asian cuisines such as Guamanian at Prubechu in the Mission, contemporary Sri Lankan at 1601 Bar & Kitchen in SoMa, and Indonesian at Borobudur on Russian Hill. (The ten-dish rijsttafel is not to be missed.) Korean and Japanese restaurants are well established, their ingredients, such as kimchi and seaweed, impacting all corners of the San Francisco food scene. Lately, Indian food has taken off in the area. Anjan Mitra, co-owner of the DOSA family of restaurants, pioneered the casual-upscale model for Indian food in San Francisco. “Indian food has moved far beyond butter chicken and tikka masala,” Mitra said. Driven by the interest that millennials have for spice-driven ethnic cuisine, Indian food “has changed to include hyper-regional and obscure dishes from India that are unfamiliar to most people in the West, served in well-designed, modern settings,” said Mitra.

But perhaps the biggest food trend in the San Francisco food scene at the moment is ramen, Asia’s most popular noodle. Global ramen chain Ippudo recently landed in San Francisco, and Nojo Ramen Tavern brings its farm-to-table izakaya concept (and poke bowls) to Hayes Valley.

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