The Inner Richmond is the part of San Francisco that locals recommend and visitors never reach. It sits west of the Presidio and north of Golden Gate Park, it is residential in every direction, and essentially all of its eating happens on one street. Clement Street runs east to west through the middle of it, and learning how that street is organised is the whole of the local knowledge here — there is no second strip to also check.
Clement changes character every couple of blocks and the good counters keep short, unposted hours. Tell Karpo which end you are on and it will tell you what is worth walking to from there.
The famous one, and what to order
Burma Superstar at 309 Clement Street is the restaurant that put this street on a map beyond its own neighbourhood. The order is the tea leaf salad — fermented tea leaves tossed at the table with peanuts, fried garlic, tomato, shredded cabbage and dried shrimp — which is one of the genuinely distinctive dishes available anywhere in San Francisco, sour and crunchy and unlike anything else on the street.
There is normally a wait. The neighbourhood's habit is to put your name down, walk two blocks in either direction while the rest of Clement is right there, and come back — which is a much better use of forty minutes than standing outside would be.
The cheap end, which is the point of the street
Good Luck Dim Sum at 736 Clement Street is small, plain and inexpensive, and it is the address that best explains why people live here. The har gow and the chicken buns are the standard order, it is largely a takeaway operation, and the total is generally a fraction of what the same food costs elsewhere in the city.
This is the layer of Clement that does not appear in guides — counters, bakeries, produce shops with fruit stacked out onto the pavement, and a dense Chinese and Vietnamese food economy that the neighbourhood runs on daily. Cafe Bunn Mi does crab pho and crispy duck banh mi for under ten dollars. Chili House at 726 Clement Street sits next door to Good Luck and is a different proposition entirely.
The old rooms
Giorgio's at 151 Clement Street is a family-owned Italian restaurant of a type that has largely disappeared from San Francisco — red sauce, pizza, families, no interest whatsoever in being current. Fiorella at 2339 Clement Street is the newer Italian option at the far western end of the street.
The distance between those two addresses is the thing to notice. Clement Street runs for a long way, and 151 and 2339 are about twenty blocks apart — a twenty-five-minute walk rather than a stroll. Checking the block number rather than the street name is the single most useful habit out here.
Mornings and coffee
Eats at 50 Clement Street is the neighbourhood's breakfast room, with a spinach and portobello benedict among the standard order. Blue Danube Coffee House at 306 Clement Street is the long-running neighbourhood coffee shop — unglamorous, comfortable, and directly across from Burma Superstar, which makes it the correct place to wait out that queue.
How the street is organised
Roughly: the low block numbers at the eastern end, from around 1st to 4th Avenue, hold the breakfast rooms, coffee and the older Italian places. The middle, around 6th to 9th Avenue, is the densest and cheapest stretch — dim sum, banh mi, produce, bakeries. The high numbers out west thin into more residential blocks with occasional destination restaurants. If you have one hour and no plan, start at the eastern end and walk west; if you want the best value, skip straight to the middle.
Practical notes
Addresses: Burma Superstar 309 Clement St; Good Luck Dim Sum 736 Clement St; Chili House 726 Clement St; Giorgio's 151 Clement St; Fiorella 2339 Clement St; Eats 50 Clement St; Blue Danube Coffee House 306 Clement St. Several of the smaller counters here are cash-preferred, and the dim sum places in particular run out of the popular items well before closing. Clement Street is served by the 2 and 38 lines along the neighbouring corridors, and street parking is far easier than in central San Francisco. Golden Gate Park is two blocks south of the street for its entire length, which makes anything bought at a counter here portable in the way North Beach food is portable to Washington Square.
Tags: #FoodNearMe #InnerRichmond #SanFrancisco #ClementStreet #BurmaSuperstar #DimSum #RichmondDistrict #TeaLeafSalad #SFEats #CheapEats #Restaurants #GoldenGatePark #SFGuide #WestSideSF
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Ask Karpo first
Clement Street is twenty blocks long and the good stuff is unevenly distributed along it, so the nearest address and the right address are often not the same. Ask Karpo what is worth walking to from the block you are on, which counters are cash-only, and how long the wait actually is right now.
