Dalida is in the Presidio, which is an unusual address for one of the most talked-about restaurants in San Francisco. Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz opened it in June 2023, live in the neighbourhood, and built an Eastern Mediterranean menu drawn from Istanbul's mixed inheritance and a bar that uses Presidio ingredients. Esquire put it on its fifty best new restaurants in America list within months.
A restaurant inside a national park has opening hours, parking and transport constraints that a city block does not. Ask Karpo how to get into the Presidio tonight and whether there is a table worth going for.
Eastern Mediterranean, specifically
The term covers a lot of ground, so it is worth narrowing. The reference point the Ozyilmazes use is Istanbul as a melting pot — a city where Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Levantine and Balkan cooking have been in conversation for centuries. The menu draws from that whole range rather than from any single national tradition.
In practice that means a table here does not resolve into one cuisine. Flaky layered borek sits near short rib kebabs with sweetbreads, and neither feels like a guest on the other's menu. The coherence comes from the geography rather than from a single set of techniques.
Michelin recognised it as a recommended restaurant within six months of opening, which for a room this new and this far from the city's restaurant districts is fast. The Esquire listing followed. This is not an undiscovered place and it has not been one since its first winter.
What to order
Borek first. Layered pastry, cheese, baked so the outside shatters and the inside stays soft — it is the dish that every Eastern Mediterranean kitchen makes and the one that most clearly reveals whether the pastry work is serious. Here it is.
Then the short rib kebab with sweetbreads, which is the dish that shows the kitchen's nerve. Sweetbreads are a commitment on a menu in a national park visitor area, and putting them alongside short rib rather than hiding them in a side dish is a statement about who the restaurant thinks its customers are.
The menu is explicitly built for sharing and a group is the right unit here. Four people ordering six or seven plates across the menu will eat far better than two people ordering two mains, and the bill per head will be lower.
The vegetable cooking deserves its own mention because it is doing more than filling out the menu. Eastern Mediterranean kitchens treat vegetables as centrepieces rather than accompaniments, and a table here can be built largely from that half of the list without feeling as though it has compromised. That is a real difference from most restaurants at this price level in San Francisco.
The bar is not an afterthought
The full bar is built around Presidio ingredients, which in a less careful restaurant would be a marketing line. Here it is a functional constraint that produces drinks you cannot order elsewhere, because the inputs are coming from the park the restaurant sits inside.
It also solves a practical problem. A restaurant this far from everything needs to be a whole evening rather than a stop, and a bar worth sitting at before and after dinner is how a destination restaurant stops feeling like an errand.
The Presidio is the variable
This is the part to plan around. The Presidio is a national park site, not a neighbourhood with a commercial strip — which means the surroundings are eucalyptus, parade grounds, restored barracks and views of the bay rather than other restaurants and bars. There is no second option two doors down.
The upside is considerable. Parking exists and is free or cheap, which is almost unheard of for a restaurant of this calibre in San Francisco. The setting is genuinely beautiful, and arriving an hour early to walk before dinner turns a reservation into an afternoon.
The downside is that the park is quiet and dark at night, the internal roads are confusing if you have not driven them before, and transport options thin out late. The PresidiGo shuttle is useful but runs to a schedule, and a rideshare into the middle of the park at eleven is slower to arrive than one to the Mission.
The sequence that works: arrive early, walk the Main Post or out toward the Tunnel Tops while it is still light, eat, and have your route home decided before you sit down rather than after.
One practical note on the neighbourhood that repeat visitors learn quickly: the Presidio gates and internal roads are not all equally useful, and the approach you pick changes the drive by ten minutes. Coming in from the Lombard Street gate is the most straightforward route for anyone arriving from the east side of the city.
Booking it
A restaurant with an Esquire listing and Michelin recognition, in a city that pays attention, in a room of finite size — book ahead. Weekends in particular are not a walk-in proposition, and the lack of nearby alternatives means a failed walk-in is a wasted journey rather than a minor adjustment.
Weekday evenings and the earlier end of service are easier, and the earlier slots are better anyway because the Presidio light before sunset is half of what you came for.
Practical notes
Dalida is in the Presidio in San Francisco, opened in June 2023 by Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz, serving Eastern Mediterranean food drawn from Istanbul's mixed culinary inheritance, with a full bar built on Presidio ingredients. It was named to Esquire's top fifty new American restaurants and recognised by Michelin within six months. Order the borek and the short rib kebab with sweetbreads, and order to share in a group. Parking is easy and cheap, which is rare; transport out late is not. Book ahead, take an early slot, and walk the park before dinner.
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
Lunch and weekend daytime service are worth considering over dinner, because the Presidio in daylight is most of the argument for the location. Eating here after dark means paying the transport cost of a national park and seeing none of it.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #Dalida #ThePresidio #MediterraneanFoodNearMe #WeekendPlans #EasternMediterranean #TurkishFood #Borek #SFRestaurants #SFEats #PresidioSF #SharedPlates #SFDining #SFFoodGuide
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether there is a table, how to get into the Presidio and what to do with the hour before dinner? Ask Karpo before you set out.
