Lokma means a bite in Turkish, and the restaurant that took the name opened in the Outer Richmond in February 2018 doing something San Francisco did not have much of: Turkish cooking filtered through California, built around mezze, the wood grill and an unusually serious breakfast. It sits at 1801 Clement Street in a room that reads as a den rather than a dining room.
The Richmond is a long way from most of San Francisco and the fog decides whether the parklet is pleasant or punishing. Ask Karpo what the weather is doing out there and whether there is a table tonight.
Where Turkish meets Californian
The phrase fusion does real work here and it is worth being precise about what it means. The techniques and the structure of the meal are Turkish — mezze first, grilled proteins after, yoghurt and butter doing the heavy lifting. The produce is Northern Californian and the menu moves with it, which is why the vegetable dishes change more than the kebabs do.
The kitchen leans on three traditions specifically: mezze, grilled meat, and the Turkish breakfast. That last one is the least familiar to most American diners and the most rewarding, and it is the reason to come at eleven on a Saturday rather than at eight on a Tuesday.
What to order
Manti first. Turkish dumplings, small and tightly folded, served under garlic yoghurt and a tomato butter sauce, and the dish that tells you whether a Turkish kitchen is serious. Lokma's are properly made and the sauce is built rather than poured, which is the detail that separates this from the version at a generic Mediterranean restaurant.
Menemen is the other thing to order, and it is a different proposition: eggs cooked soft with tomato and pepper into something between scrambled eggs and a stew, eaten with bread. It is breakfast food and it is on the all-day side of the menu, which is the correct decision.
The tzatziki gets singled out by regulars often enough to be worth mentioning on its own. It is a simple thing done with good yoghurt and restraint, and in a mezze order of four or five plates it is the one that disappears first.
For the grill, the move is to order one protein rather than three and spend the rest of the budget on mezze. The wood grill is good and the kebabs are honest, but the mezze section is where the Californian half of the kitchen shows its hand, and it changes with the season in a way the grill does not.
The Turkish breakfast for two
This is the order that justifies the trip across the city. A Turkish breakfast platter is not a dish but an arrangement — cheeses, olives, tomato and cucumber, eggs, preserves, bread, butter and honey, spread across a table and eaten slowly over an hour. It is designed for two people and it does not scale down.
It is also the most culturally specific thing on the menu and the hardest to find elsewhere in San Francisco. If you have had Turkish breakfast in Istanbul you will recognise the format immediately; if you have not, it is a genuinely different way of eating in the morning and worth the experiment.
The room
Brick walls, and window sills crowded with found glass, bird feeders and plants in mismatched pots. The effect is homey rather than designed — closer to somebody's front room than to a restaurant with an aesthetic consultant, and a deliberate contrast with the polish that a comparable kitchen downtown would adopt.
There is a heated parklet outside, which in the Outer Richmond is less of a luxury than a necessity and more useful than it sounds. The fog out here is not an occasional inconvenience, it is the climate, and a heated outdoor table means you can sit outside in conditions that would make an unheated one miserable.
Hospitality gets mentioned in nearly every account of this place, along with the effort made around vegetarian, vegan and other dietary requirements. In a cuisine built on grilled meat, having a kitchen that takes the vegetable half of the menu equally seriously is worth knowing if your table is mixed.
It is worth knowing that this is a room for two to four people. The tables are small and closely set, and while a party of six can be accommodated it will involve a configuration that nobody enjoys. Turkish eating is communal, but this particular dining room is not built for a crowd.
The Outer Richmond problem
There is no way around this: 1801 Clement is a long way from almost everywhere else in San Francisco. It is a genuine journey from the Mission, from SOMA, from anywhere a visitor is likely to be staying, and the bus out along Clement takes the time it takes.
The compensation is that the Outer Richmond is one of the best eating neighbourhoods in the city and almost nobody crosses town for it. Clement Street has a density of very good, very unfashionable restaurants that the Mission has priced out, and making the trip for one meal is a waste of the journey.
Parking, unusually for San Francisco, is actually manageable out here. That makes this one of the few restaurants in the city where driving is a reasonable plan, which partly offsets the distance.
Practical notes
Lokma is at 1801 Clement Street in the Outer Richmond, San Francisco, open since February 2018, serving Turkish-Californian cooking built on mezze, the wood grill and Turkish breakfast. Order the manti, the menemen and the tzatziki; the Turkish breakfast for two is the reason to come in the morning. The room is brick-walled and homey with a heated parklet, which matters given the fog. Vegetarian and vegan requests are handled properly. Parking is easier than almost anywhere else in the city, and Clement Street deserves more than one stop.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #Lokma #OuterRichmond #MediterraneanFoodNearMe #Restaurants #TurkishFood #ClementStreet #Manti #Menemen #TurkishBreakfast #SFEats #SFRestaurants #Mezze #SFFoodGuide
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether the parklet is bearable tonight, how long the wait is and what else on Clement Street is worth the trip? Ask Karpo before you head out to the Richmond.
