San Francisco queues for breakfast with a seriousness that surprises people from cities with more restaurants per head. On a Saturday morning there are lines down the pavement outside a dozen rooms across the city, in weather that does not encourage standing about, for food that in several cases is available without a wait four blocks away. Some of those queues are entirely justified. Several are not, and the difference is assessable before you join one.
Some of these waits buy something genuinely unavailable elsewhere and some buy a photograph. Ask Karpo what the queue is right now before you commit an hour to it.
The test: what is actually being made
A queue is worth it when the thing at the end of it cannot be got elsewhere. That usually means a specific bake — a laminated pastry, a bread, a particular technique — produced by one kitchen in limited quantity. Tartine at 18th and Guerrero built its queue on exactly that: the bake times are fixed, the quantities are finite, and what comes out is genuinely not available at the same standard four blocks away.
A queue is not worth it when what is at the end of it is eggs. Very good eggs, cooked well, are available all over San Francisco without a wait, and no amount of skill on a plate of eggs justifies ninety minutes in the cold. The honest test is whether you could name what makes it different, and if the answer is that it is famous, that is the queue you skip.
The rooms with permanent lines
Mama's on Washington Square Park in North Beach has the longest and most photographed queue in the city and has had for decades. It is genuinely good and the wait is genuinely long, and both of those facts are permanent. Brenda's French Soul Food at 652 Polk Street serves New Orleans-influenced breakfast with a beignet flight that is the reason for the queue outside — and is a twenty-minute experience on a weekday morning rather than a two-hour one.
Zazie at 941 Cole Street in Cole Valley has been doing French-inflected brunch with a back patio for decades and has a known, predictable weekend wait in a pleasant neighbourhood to wait in. Devil's Teeth Baking Company on Noriega Street in the Outer Sunset built its reputation on a breakfast sandwich and has the queue that goes with it.
What almost all of these have in common is that the queue is a weekend phenomenon. The same kitchen on a Tuesday is a different and much shorter proposition.
Four questions from the back of the line
How many seats does the room have — under about thirty and the wait is structural arithmetic rather than a choice. How long does a table take, because a room where people linger over brunch for ninety minutes clears a queue far more slowly than a counter. Is there a virtual waitlist you can join from a phone, which many San Francisco restaurants now run and which converts standing into walking. And is there a comparable option within four blocks, which in this city there almost always is.
The timing that removes the problem
Weekend breakfast queues in San Francisco peak between about ten and half past twelve. Before nine and after one-thirty, the same restaurants are half empty. That is a two-hour saving available to anyone willing to set an alarm or eat late, and it is the single most effective thing in this entire piece.
Weekdays remove it entirely. If you are visiting for several days, put every queue restaurant on a Tuesday or Wednesday and use the weekend for things that do not have a line — the city has plenty. If you live here, the same logic applies with more force, because you have all the weekdays.
The bakery workaround
The other route around the whole problem is to stop thinking about breakfast as a sit-down meal. San Francisco's bakeries are among the best in the country and most of them will hand you something extraordinary across a counter in four minutes. A pastry, a coffee and a bench in the eastern half of the city — where the fog clears earliest — is a better Saturday morning than ninety minutes on a pavement, costs a quarter as much, and leaves the day intact. The queue restaurants will still be there on a weekday.
What to do while you wait
If you are going to queue, queue somewhere with a neighbourhood attached. Cole Valley, North Beach and the Outer Sunset all reward a forty-minute wait spent walking rather than standing — a bookshop, a park, a block you have not seen. The virtual waitlists that many of these restaurants now run make that possible rather than theoretical: join from a phone, walk for half an hour, come back when the message arrives. The queues that are genuinely unpleasant are the ones where the only option is standing on a pavement in the wind, which is a good reason to check for a waitlist before you commit.
Practical notes
A queue is justified when the item cannot be got elsewhere — a specific bake in limited quantity, as at Tartine at 18th and Guerrero — and is not justified when the item is eggs. Rooms with permanent weekend lines: Mama's on Washington Square Park in North Beach; Brenda's French Soul Food, 652 Polk St, where the beignet flight is the draw and a weekday visit is a twenty-minute experience; Zazie, 941 Cole St in Cole Valley, with a back patio; and Devil's Teeth Baking Company on Noriega St in the Outer Sunset. Four checks: seat count, table duration, whether a virtual waitlist exists, and whether a comparable option is within four blocks. Weekend queues peak 10am to 12:30pm; before 9am and after 1:30pm the same rooms are half empty, and weekdays remove the queue entirely. The bakery-and-bench alternative costs a quarter as much and takes four minutes.
Tags: #BestBreakfastNearMe #SanFrancisco #BrunchSF #Queues #Tartine #MamasOnWashingtonSquare #BrendasFrenchSoulFood #Zazie #DevilsTeeth #NorthBeach #ColeValley #OuterSunset #Bakeries #WeekendPlans
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Ask Karpo first
A breakfast queue is a price and it changes by the hour. Ask Karpo what the wait is at the place you had in mind, whether there is a virtual list you can join from here, and which bakery four blocks away has no line at all.
