Nob Hill has a geography problem for anyone trying to eat there. The top of the hill is grand hotels, apartment buildings, a cathedral and a small park — very little of it is a restaurant, and what is tends to be attached to a hotel. The actual eating happens on the slopes, and mostly on the western one, where the hill runs down toward Polk Street. Understanding that saves you from walking uphill looking for dinner that is behind you.
The good rooms here are downhill and several of them close far earlier than you would expect for a central neighbourhood. Tell Karpo where you are staying and it will point you down the right side of the hill.
The famous counter
Swan Oyster Depot at 1517 Polk Street is the neighbourhood's landmark and one of the most singular restaurants in San Francisco: a narrow marble counter with a small number of stools, no tables, no reservations, and a queue on the pavement outside for most of the hours it is open. It serves oysters, crab, prawns, chowder and smoked fish, handed across the counter by people who have worked there a long time.
Two practical facts govern any visit. It is a daytime operation — it does not do dinner, so this is a lunch plan rather than an evening one. And there is no way to skip the queue, so the only strategy available is to arrive early or to arrive late and accept whichever of those trade-offs you prefer.
Polk Street, more generally
Polk Street is the reason the western slope works. It runs the length of the neighbourhood's edge and carries restaurants, bars, boutiques and bookshops at a density the top of the hill has nothing like. If you are staying on Nob Hill and have no plan at all, walking downhill to Polk and then choosing is a better method than searching, because the results will send you to hotel restaurants that are more expensive and less interesting than what is four blocks west.
The small rooms
Nook at 1500 Hyde Street has been going since 2005, serving coffee, wine, beer and small plates in a laid-back, homey room. It is on the cable car line and it is the sort of place that functions as a café in the morning and a wine bar in the evening without changing much in between — which makes it the most useful single address on the hill itself rather than on its slope.
Ristorante Milano on Powell Street is a family-owned Italian room of the old kind, and Bouche at 603 Bush Street does French-inspired cooking on a biweekly changing seasonal prix fixe. Between them they cover the two versions of a proper sit-down dinner up here: the familiar one and the planned one.
What to know about the hill itself
The gradients are real. Nob Hill is one of the steepest inhabited parts of San Francisco, and a four-block walk that looks trivial on a map can be a serious climb — particularly the return trip from Polk Street back up to the top, which is uphill the entire way. The California Street and Powell Street cable car lines cross the neighbourhood and are genuinely a form of transport here rather than only a tourist activity.
The other thing worth planning around is that the hill goes quiet early. This is a residential and hotel neighbourhood rather than a nightlife one, and if the evening is meant to continue past about ten, it will continue somewhere else — Polk Street north toward Russian Hill, or down into the Tenderloin and beyond.
Choosing
Lunch, and you want the thing this neighbourhood is known for: Swan Oyster Depot, early. Coffee that becomes wine over four hours: Nook on Hyde. A straightforward Italian dinner: Ristorante Milano. Something planned and seasonal: Bouche. No plan at all: walk downhill to Polk and decide there.
Practical notes
Addresses: Swan Oyster Depot 1517 Polk St; Nook 1500 Hyde St; Bouche 603 Bush St. Ristorante Milano is on Powell Street. Swan Oyster Depot takes no reservations, has counter seating only and is a daytime operation rather than a dinner one. The California Street and Powell Street cable car lines both cross Nob Hill, and the 1 and 19 lines serve the slope down toward Polk. The walk from the top of the hill down to Polk Street is easy and the return is not — factor that in before dinner rather than after it.
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Ask Karpo first
Nob Hill's best-known room only does lunch and takes no bookings, and the walk back up from the good street is steeper than it looks. Ask Karpo what is open now on the slope below you, how long the queue on Polk is, and whether to take the cable car back up.
