San Francisco is famous for seafood and the famous part of it is in the wrong place. Fisherman's Wharf has not been a working fishing centre in any meaningful sense for a long time, and the restaurants along Jefferson Street are priced for people who will eat there once. The seafood that people who live here actually eat is scattered across four or five neighbourhoods, mostly in unglamorous rooms, and it is substantially better.
The good seafood in this city is nowhere near the postcard, and the season matters more than the address. Ask Karpo what is actually fresh near you today.
Swan Oyster Depot, and its limitations
Swan Oyster Depot at 1517 Polk Street is the best seafood counter in San Francisco and has been since 1912. Eighteen stools in a row, no tables, no reservations, a queue down the pavement, an early afternoon close and no Sunday service. The order is oysters, a crab Louie, smoked salmon, and whatever is written on the board.
It is also useless for a group, and this is worth saying plainly because people plan around it wrongly. Eighteen stools means a party of six will be split across the room at four different times. Two people, yes. Six people, go somewhere else and come back another day.
Chinatown and the live tanks
Chinatown's seafood restaurants and markets are the most under-recognised part of the city's seafood culture by visitors and the most used by residents. The markets along Stockton Street run live tanks, and the restaurants around them cook what comes out of them — salt-and-pepper crab, steamed whole fish, clams in black bean sauce.
R&G Lounge at 631 Kearny Street is the room most people are sent to and it deserves it, particularly for a group: multiple floors, round tables that seat ten, and a salt-and-pepper crab that arrives already broken down for sharing. Yuet Lee at 1300 Stockton Street, on the corner of Broadway, serves Cantonese seafood into the small hours under famously bright lighting and is the answer at half past midnight.
The Richmond and the Sunset
The western neighbourhoods are where the value is. Clement Street in the Inner Richmond carries Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese and Russian food at prices that have never been adjusted for visitors, and the seafood within that is excellent — whole fish, clay pots, salt-and-pepper preparations. PPQ Dungeness Island at 2332 Clement Street does roast crab and garlic noodles at a lower price and in a plainer room than its more famous relatives.
The Outer Sunset has Thanh Long at 4101 Judah Street, the original An family dining room and the birthplace of the roast crab and garlic noodle combination that has since been copied across California. It takes reservations, it is a proper restaurant rather than a counter, and the two dishes it is known for are built to be shared.
The season is the real variable
The single most useful thing to know about San Francisco seafood is that the local Dungeness crab season does not open until well into November in a normal year, and in several recent years it has opened later than that because of delays to protect migrating whales from entanglement in trap gear.
Which means the crab on a menu in September is frozen or from elsewhere on the Pacific coast. That is not a reason to avoid it; it is a reason to order it prepared rather than plain. In the shoulder months, take the roasted, wok-fried and salt-and-pepper versions, where the kitchen does something to the crab, and save the cracked Dungeness with drawn butter for December when it is local and the price reflects a boat rather than a freight bill.
Where the actual boats are
If you want the working version of the waterfront rather than the tourist one, Pier 45 and the fish handling facilities behind the Wharf are still in use, and the Hog Island Oyster Co counter in the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street sits inside a working market building rather than an attraction. The Saturday farmers market there is where a number of the city's kitchens buy. It is four minutes from the tourist waterfront by transit and about forty years away from it in every other respect.
Buying it to cook rather than to eat
The other half of this is the fish markets, which are cheaper and better than the restaurants and which almost nobody outside the neighbourhoods uses. The Chinatown markets along Stockton Street, the counters along Clement Street in the Richmond, and the stalls at the Ferry Building all sell whole fish, shellfish and prepared items to take home. A whole fish cleaned to order costs a fraction of what the same fish costs on a plate, and steaming one with ginger and spring onion is a fifteen-minute job. If the crab is out of season, that is exactly the week to buy something else entirely and cook it.
Practical notes
Swan Oyster Depot, 1517 Polk St, since 1912: 18 stools, no tables, no reservations, early afternoon close, closed Sundays — excellent for two, unworkable for a group. R&G Lounge, 631 Kearny St, Chinatown: multiple floors, round tables for ten, salt-and-pepper crab served pre-broken for sharing. Yuet Lee, 1300 Stockton St at Broadway: Cantonese seafood into the small hours. Stockton St markets run live tanks. PPQ Dungeness Island, 2332 Clement St, Inner Richmond: roast crab and garlic noodles at a lower price. Thanh Long, 4101 Judah St, Outer Sunset: the original An family room, takes reservations. Central California's Dungeness season generally opens in November and has been delayed in recent years over whale entanglement risk, so expect frozen or out-of-region crab before then and order prepared rather than plain. Hog Island Oyster Co in the Ferry Building sits in a working market building with a Saturday farmers market used by city kitchens.
Tags: #SeafoodNearMe #SanFrancisco #SwanOysterDepot #RandGLounge #YuetLee #ThanhLong #PPQ #ClementStreet #Chinatown #OuterSunset #DungenessCrab #FerryBuilding #HiddenGems #SFEats
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
The seafood worth eating in San Francisco depends on the season and on which neighbourhood you are in, not on the postcard. Ask Karpo what came in fresh this week, which rooms near you have space tonight, and whether the crab on the menu is local yet.
