San Francisco has an outsized food reputation for a city of eight hundred thousand people, and the reputation is deserved in some categories and inflated in others. Eating well here is largely a matter of knowing which is which — the city is genuinely one of the best places in the world for certain cuisines and merely competent at several others, and the difference is not reflected in the pricing.
The city is exceptional at some cuisines and ordinary at others. Ask Karpo which of its real strengths is near you tonight.
Where San Francisco genuinely leads
Cantonese, first and most importantly. The city has one of the oldest and largest Chinese communities in the United States — Chinatown here dates to the 1840s — and the depth of Cantonese cooking across Chinatown, the Richmond and the Sunset is not matched in many American cities. Dim sum, roast meats, seafood banquet cooking and noodle shops all operate at a level and a price that would be remarkable anywhere.
Mexican, specifically the Mission tradition. The Mission burrito was created in the neighbourhood's taquerias in the 1960s and the surrounding food culture — taquerias, panaderías, Salvadoran pupuserías, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan rooms — is one of the city's genuine strengths. And Vietnamese and Burmese, concentrated in the Tenderloin and the outer neighbourhoods, both of which the Bay Area does as well as anywhere in the country.
The California category
The other thing San Francisco actually invented is a way of cooking rather than a cuisine: produce-led, seasonal, technically simple, built on the extraordinary agricultural output of Northern California. That approach spread from Berkeley in the 1970s and it now underlies most serious cooking in the region, whatever the menu says it is.
The practical version of this is that the vegetables here are the best in the country and restaurants know it. A menu with three or four vegetable dishes given the same weight as the proteins is a good sign, and ordering the vegetable dishes at a serious San Francisco restaurant is frequently the best decision on the menu. The farmers markets — the Ferry Building on Saturdays being the largest — are the visible end of the same system.
Where it is good but not exceptional
Italian, which is well represented in North Beach and across the city but is not a category where San Francisco leads nationally. Japanese, which has excellent examples and less depth than Los Angeles or New York. French, which has a handful of very good rooms and no great density. Indian, which is far stronger in the South Bay and the East Bay than in the city itself.
None of this is a reason not to eat any of it. It is a reason not to spend a limited number of meals in San Francisco on a cuisine you could eat as well elsewhere, when the Cantonese and Mexican options here are genuinely difficult to match.
The neighbourhood map
Chinatown, the Richmond along Clement and Geary, and the Sunset along Irving, Noriega and Taraval for Chinese and Southeast Asian. The Mission and the Excelsior for Mexican and Central American. The Tenderloin for Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese, Middle Eastern and West African, at the lowest prices in central San Francisco. Japantown for Japanese. North Beach for Italian.
For the modern California cooking, the geography is different: Hayes Valley, the Mission along Valencia, the Dogpatch, Bernal Heights and the northern neighbourhoods, generally in smaller rooms with short menus. These are the most expensive restaurants in the city and the ones most subject to fashion.
Across the bridge
One honest caveat: several of the Bay Area's strongest food categories are not in San Francisco at all. Oakland and Berkeley carry much of the region's best Ethiopian, Mexican and barbecue, and the East Bay's produce-led cooking is where the whole California approach began. The South Bay has the best Indian and Vietnamese food in the region by a wide margin, and Fremont has one of the largest Afghan communities in the country. If you are here for more than a few days, at least one of those trips is worth the BART fare.
Choosing on a given night
The heuristic that works is to pick the cuisine first and then the neighbourhood, rather than searching by proximity. San Francisco is small enough that any neighbourhood is reachable, and the difference between the best version of a cuisine and a competent one is far larger than the difference in travel time.
The second heuristic is to eat the city's strengths when eating out and to save the categories it is merely good at for convenience. A dim sum lunch in the Richmond, a burrito in the Mission, a Burmese dinner in the Tenderloin and a vegetable-led dinner in Hayes Valley is a better four meals in San Francisco than any four restaurants chosen by rating.
The last thing worth saying is about price expectation. San Francisco restaurant prices are high across the board, and the correlation between price and quality here is weaker than in most cities. Some of the best meals available are twelve dollars in the Tenderloin or the Richmond and some of the most ordinary are sixty in Hayes Valley. Judging a room by what it charges is the least reliable heuristic available in this city.
Practical notes
Kitchens here close earlier than in most large American cities; a nine-thirty arrival is late in much of the city. Many Chinatown and Richmond restaurants close between about three and five and several close one weekday. A great number of San Francisco restaurants add a service or health surcharge printed at the bottom of the menu, so read it before tipping. The best cheap eating is in the Tenderloin, the Richmond, the Sunset and the Excelsior. And check the fog in summer — the outer neighbourhoods can be ten degrees colder than the Mission on the same evening.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #SFFood #BestRestaurants #Cantonese #MissionBurrito #Chinatown #RichmondDistrict #SunsetDistrict #Tenderloin #HayesValley #NorthBeach #FoodNearMe #SFEats #DiningGuide
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know which of the city's real strengths is near you tonight, who is still open, and where the queue is shortest? Ask Karpo before you choose.
