Kokkari has been on Jackson Street since the late nineties, which in San Francisco restaurant years is close to geological. It has outlasted several booms, at least two crashes and the near-total reinvention of the blocks around it, and it has done so by being extremely good at one thing: cooking Greek food over actual fire in a room that feels like somewhere you would want to spend a winter evening. The catch is that the room everyone pictures and the room most reservations put you in are not the same room.
Two rooms, one fireplace, and a booking system that does not let you choose. Ask Karpo when the front room is realistically walkable-into, and what the wait looks like tonight before you commit to a table you did not want.
Two rooms, one of them famous
Walk in and you are in the front room: a big open hearth, low light, heavy timber, a bar along one side. This is the room in every photograph of the restaurant and the reason people describe it as the most comfortable dining room in the city on a cold night.
Walk further and you reach the main dining room, which is larger, brighter, more conventional and perfectly good. It is also where a standard reservation is most likely to seat you, because that is where the tables are. Nobody is doing anything underhand; there are simply far more covers back there than there are seats by the fire.
If the fireplace is the point of the trip, the honest route is the bar and the high tables in the front, which run on a walk-in basis. That means arriving early, or arriving at an odd hour, and being willing to eat at a bar rather than a table. It is a trade, and for this particular room it is usually worth making.
Cooking over fire, seriously
The kitchen's whole identity is live fire — a hearth, a grill and a spit — and the menu is arranged around what those three things do well. Lamb turned slowly over coals is the signature and the thing to order if you are only ordering one thing.
Grilled octopus is the other benchmark dish, and it is a fair test of a Greek kitchen because badly done octopus is unforgivable and well done octopus barely needs anything on it. Here it comes charred hard on the outside and still tender, dressed simply, which is the correct answer.
Whole fish, grilled and filleted at the table, is the third pillar and the most underordered. It is priced by weight and it is not cheap, but it is the dish that best shows what an open grill can do, and splitting one between two people is a more interesting meal than two separate mains.
The mezedes problem
Greek menus open with mezedes, and this one opens with a long list of them — spreads, fried things, cheeses, small vegetable plates. They are very good and they are also a trap, because they arrive quickly and they are easy to keep ordering while you decide on the rest.
A useful rule is two or three mezedes for a table of four, not one each. The grill portions are substantial, and a table that has worked through six spreads and a plate of fried cheese will not be able to do justice to a whole lamb shoulder twenty minutes later.
Bread and olive oil come out early and are genuinely hard to stop eating, which compounds the same problem. None of this is a criticism of the kitchen. It is simply how a menu designed for long, slow, sharing meals behaves when you treat it like a list of starters.
When to go, and what the neighbourhood does
Weekday lunch is a business-lunch service and it behaves accordingly — brisk, full between roughly noon and two, and quieter either side. It is also the easiest time to get in, and the fireplace room is far less contested at midday than it is at eight in the evening.
Winter is when this restaurant makes the most sense. San Francisco does cold, damp evenings extremely well, and a wood fire and slow-roasted lamb is a more compelling proposition in January than in a warm September. The room is good year-round; it is exceptional when the weather is bad.
Jackson Square around it is one of the older and quieter pockets of the city, full of low brick buildings and design showrooms, and it empties out at night. That makes it calm and slightly sleepy rather than a place to wander after dinner — plan the second stop towards North Beach or the waterfront rather than assuming the block will provide one.
Practical notes
The fireplace is in the front room and largely walk-in; standard reservations usually seat you in the larger dining room behind it.
If the fire matters, go early or go at an off-hour and be willing to eat at the bar.
Order the spit-roasted lamb if you order one thing. Grilled octopus and whole grilled fish are the other two things the fire does best.
Two or three mezedes for four people, not one each — the grill portions are large.
Weekday lunch is the easiest service to get into, and the front room is much quieter at midday.
Jackson Square is quiet after dark. Plan a second stop in North Beach rather than on the block.
Whole fish is priced by weight and filleted at the table. Split one between two people rather than ordering separate mains — it is the dish that best shows what the grill can do.
Tags: #mediterraneanfood #kokkari #greekfood #sanfrancisco #sfeats #jacksonsquare #grilledoctopus #sfrestaurants #openfirecooking #lambroast #bayareafood #sfdining #wholefish #mezedes
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Ask Karpo first
The dish is easy and the seat is hard. Ask Karpo how busy the front room is tonight, whether the bar is a realistic walk-in at the hour you are free, and where to go afterwards given that Jackson Square goes quiet early.
