From touchdown, no other city in the country whets my appetite like San Francisco, where arrivals at Terminal 2 at SFO are welcomed with a feast. Calling to me as I disembark are Burger Joint, where the Niman Ranch patties are slipped inside toasted buns, and Lark Creek Grill, the source of breakfast omelets made with cage-free eggs. Coffee comes by way of a pedigreed local: Peet’s, originally from Berkeley.
Most impressive of all is the 5,000-square-foot Napa Farms Market, stocked with eats from Acme Bread Company and Cowgirl Creamery, among other local treasures, and alongside a wine bar where Northern California labels are poured. I’m tempted to cancel my lunch reservation in the city and assemble a picnic on the spot, except it’s been years since I’ve seen Greens, one of the foremost vegetarian restaurants in the country, and the two of us need to catch up.
“The Bay Area is obsessed with food,” says Joyce Goldstein, chef of the late, groundbreaking Square One restaurant and author of the 2013 book “Inside the California Food Revolution.”
Talk about an understatement. San Francisco is the kind of place where locals like to introduce visitors to $4 slices of toast — make that dark mountain rye slathered with cream cheese and sprinkled with black pepper and sea salt at the Mill, near Alamo Square — and to show off fashions that haven’t made their way back East, let alone to flyover country. To the best of my knowledge, New York has yet to start serving non-Chinese food on dim sum carts, as is the practice at trendy State Bird Provisions, or to share a taste of Hawaii in the manner of the breezy new Liholiho Yacht Club.
Compared to the East Coast, “it’s easier to cook out here,” says Michael Tusk of the high-end Quince, thanks to “the raw product” in “a land of plenty” distinguished by vibrant microclimates. That might help account for why at least one restaurant opened every week in the city last year, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
If it sounds as though I left my heart here, it’s because I fell hard for the city when I called it home in the 1990s, charting trends and reviewing restaurants for the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m back now as I continue my tour of America’s best food cities, 10 of which I’ll rate at year’s end based on criteria including creativity, variety and tradition. (Charleston, S.C., was first out of the gate.) With the exception of a certain restaurant in Berkeley that helped change the way Americans look at food, most of my time was spent eating, shopping, bar-hopping and cookbook browsing within city limits.
A passion for matters of the table is nothing new to San Francisco.
Think pop-ups are a recent phenomenon? The distinction could date to 1849, when a trio of Croatian immigrants sold charcoal-grilled fish from a tent on the wharf, an idea that evolved into the bricks-and-mortar Tadich Grill. “From the very first days of the Gold Rush, San Francisco earned a reputation as a restaurant town,” writes Erica J. Peters in “San Francisco: A Food Biography.” “Ships brought exotic ingredients from all over the world, as well as people used to many different cuisines. Early reports emphasized the diversity of restaurants, the fact almost all meals were either eaten in public or brought home ready-to-eat, and the vast amounts that San Franciscans were spending on food.”
Since at least the 1930s, San Francisco had restaurants where diners could see cooks at work, but the design trend blossomed in the 1980s along with the rise of celebrity chefs. Sitting close to the fragrant wood-burning oven at Zuni Café or watching Ravi Kapur in his screaming-yellow kitchen, set smack in the center of the Liholiho Yacht Club, forges a bond between patron and restaurant.
Some of the most popular foodstuffs and dishes in the country originated in San Francisco: sourdough bread, the seafood stew called cioppino, crab Louis, the oyster omelet known as Hangtown fry, Ghirardelli chocolate, Rice-a-Roni. Yet another San Francisco treat is the mai tai, said to have been created in 1944 at the legendary Trader Vic’s. (Coffee, in contrast, was so bad that in 1963, the subject got front-page treatment in the San Francisco Chronicle. “A Great City’s People Forced to Drink Swill,” the headline scolded. Thankfully, that hasn’t been true for many years, and the city has been just as influential in coffee circles as culinary ones; the city’s own Blue Bottle Coffee almost a decade ago imported the Japanese style of pour-over that has become de rigeur at high-end coffee shops from coast to coast.)
In recent decades, San Francisco produced such revolutionary restaurants as the now-shuttered Stars, an American — not French — bistro created by Jeremiah Tower; Square One, Goldstein’s love letter to Turkey, Morocco and Italy-beyond-the-obvious; Zuni Café, the soulful, ingredient-driven Cal-Ital retreat nurtured by the late Judy Rodgers; and the Slanted Door, its menu by Charles Phan an exciting twist on Vietnamese fare. Five years ago, chef Corey Lee, a native of Korea and a veteran of the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., advanced the cause of fine-dining with Benu, a serene East-meets-West proposition.
San Francisco – notably Chez Panisse, the temple of all things pure and local opened by Alice Waters in Berkeley in 1971 — has helped define the term “California cuisine,” celebrated for its focus on the fresh and seasonal long before those descriptors were expected by the masses. Among other national trends that were popularized in the area: small plates, communal tables in upscale restaurants and politics as part of the food conversation. (The unexpected benefit for a solo diner seated at the group table at the neighborly Nopa, I learned on a prior visit: strangers becoming friends as we exchanged tastes of some of the shareables.)
This country brims with fine farmers markets, but few capture their city as well as the sprawl — with a bay view — outside the Ferry Building Marketplace, where even “European chefs walk around with their mouths hanging open,” says Goldstein. She compares the stalls of artisanal goods and organic ingredients to the Rialto in Venice and maintains that her go-to market bests much of what’s in France. Nancy Oakes, chef-owner of the beloved Boulevard, explains the bounty: People in San Francisco dig cooking and don’t see the act as a mere “spectator sport.” Never has this shopper seen mushrooms in such an earthy rainbow of colors, or leaves in more shades of green: dandelion, mizuna, nettles, purslane, basils, mints and fig leaves. And that’s just the tip of the (organic) iceberg.
Lee says the backbone of his city’s vibrant culinary scene is its audience. “San Franciscans, in general, are highly aware and supportive of not only our local restaurants but also our local farmers, artisans and growing areas,” he e-mailed during a trip to promote his new cookbook, “Benu,” in Hong Kong and Seoul. “It makes for a dining scene in which people are fully immersed in our food culture.”
Locals aren’t the only ones lapping up the scene. Where tourists in other cities go for the sun, the fun, the architecture or the arts, many visitors to San Francisco are drawn by the prospect of restaurant hopping. Last year, the city welcomed more than 18 million guests, according to the San Francisco Travel Association. For a lot of them, says longtime Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer, “food isn’t just fuel.”
Spend a few days here, and you learn that eating and drinking are to San Francisco what government and politics are to Washington. And that discerning millennials are eating swell across the board, whether they’re picking up sausages made in-house from locally sourced meat in the Market in the Twitter building, smearing rice crackers with a spread of ground pork, shrimp and peanut butter at the hipster Kin Khao or ordering as if off a sushi list at the trendy Progress. That last restaurant, sibling and neighbor to State Bird Provisions, turns shaved cauliflower and pig “fries” into an unforgettable salad.
Moving on up — way up — “San Francisco is doing fine-dining better than any other city in the country,” says Kate Krader, who scouts talent for Food &Wine magazine’s annual Best New Chefs awards. The tastemaker points to Benu, Coi and Saison, helmed respectively by chefs Lee, Daniel Patterson and Josh Skenes, as restaurants that are going beyond classical models.
I’d add to the list Quince, the hushed lair of Tusk, whose elegant tasting menus — a la carte has all but disappeared at this altitude — revel in such fine points as 10-inch-tall wineglasses that keep a full-time polisher employed and a mignardise cart bearing nearly 30 exquisite bite-size sweets. For its part, Michelin bestowed its highest rating, three stars, on Benu and Saison. (The French guide publishes in only two other American cities, Chicago and New York.)
No matter what your thirst, the city can meet it, be it with a cold-pressed organic juice blend from Project Juice at the gleaming new Market in the Twitter building; a coffee at Sightglass, where the beans are roasted near the entrance; or a cocktail at Bar Agricole, where the kitchen performs as ably as the gents behind the bar. Brewing now, in the place that brought us Anchor Steam: a craft beer scene expected to see double the number of 20 breweries in 2016.
San Francisco’s proximity to Napa and Sonoma might lead one to believe that locals are invested in wines from Northern California, but the high prices of those wares, combined with the tastes of young money in the city, are creating more international, value-driven wine lists, says Rajat Parr, wine director for the local Michael Mina restaurant group and this year’s recipient of the award for Outstanding Wine, Beer, or Spirits Professional from the James Beard Foundation. “The reality is, wine from Napa is getting out of reach.” Craft beer, top-shelf cocktails and “sommeliers in their 20s” are siphoning attention away from state-made juice, too, adds the author and vintner.
Supportive media cheer on the scene. In the Chronicle Food section’s glory days, under the direction of Bauer, the staff numbered 16, a garden with lettuces and Meyer lemon trees graced the building’s rooftop and the wine cellar held 20,000 bottles of wine. Just like Michelle Obama, Bauer could brag about honey being made where he worked. The critic credits a food-savvy audience for the rich coverage: The paper, he says, had to “keep up with the population.” (The section lost its separate building and was subsumed into a Food + Home section last year.)
Paradise has its limits, naturally. Although a diner can find a lot of places for Chinese, few are great and none compare to the now-closed Mandarin, the elegant supplier of tea-smoked duck and sizzling rice soup opened by Cecilia Chiang in 1961. (Her design philosophy: “No gold. No red. No dragons. No lanterns.”) Examples of Middle Eastern cooking are in short supply, too. Good luck finding family-friendly places or establishments catering to mixed ages, a problem some attribute to housing costs that make San Francisco a tough sell for families. And the NOISE! There’s a reason the Chronicle added sound checks to its restaurant reviews – in 1998, the first newspaper to do so.
Still, the city remains, for me, more important than Paris in terms of tracking trends and watching the seasons go by on one’s plate. This diner would welcome bread baked to match individual courses (think seaweed bread with fish – thank you, Quince) or dinners that are prepaid and segue from one room to another (as at the dinner party known as Lazy Bear).
That picnic I was contemplating when I landed at the airport? I managed a modified version in Terminal 2 on the way home, loading up at Napa Farms Market on local Equator coffee and a sandwich courtesy of Tyler Florence for the flight back to Washington.
Coming and going, San Francisco has me hooked.
WHERE TO GO
Restaurants
Aziza, 5800 Geary Blvd., 415-752-2222, aziza-sf.com; Chef Mourad Lahlou’s contemporary take on the food of his homeland garnered him a Michelin star, a first for a Moroccan restaurant in the United States. Gracious service accompanies his basteeya, duck confit wrapped in pastry and dusted with confectioners’ sugar. Creating a buzz since January: Mourad, the chef’s plush new baby in SoMa.
Boulevard, 1 Mission St., 415-543-6084, boulevardrestaurant.com; Award-winning chef-owner Nancy Oakes serves her refined American cooking in a romantic belle époque setting that takes in views of the Bay Bridge. Open — and beloved — since 1993.
Cafe Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley; 510-548-5049, chezpanisse.com; Alice Waters’s ground-floor dining room and set menu get more attention, but insiders prefer the upstairs cafe, with its a la carte list and wood-fired oven. The three-course menu du jour is a seasonal deal at $32. Sign of the times: a shout-out to ceramicists on the daily-changing script.
Frances, 3870 17th St., 415-621-3870, frances-sf.com; A tribute to the chef Melissa Perello’s grandmother in a slim, unfussy dining room in the Castro. Spinach and green garlic soup with Parmesan sablé is a poem to spring; Sonoma duck breast with toasted farro, figs and walnuts reveals a Mediterranean bent. Another detail worth toasting: The house white and red wines are poured by the ounce for $1.50.
Greens, 2 Marina Blvd., Fort Mason Building A, 415-771-6222, greensrestaurant.com; Set in a former machine shop with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the city’s most famous vegetarian restaurant opened 36 years ago. Yet its menu – colorful spring rolls, a vivid Indian sampler, asparagus pizza brightened with lemon zest – tastes very much of today.
Kin Khao, 55 Cyril Magnin, 415-362-7456, kinkhao.com; Combine the talents of a Bangkok-born blogger, Pim Techamuanvivit, and a former Manresa chef, Michael Gaines, and you get a gem of a Thai eatery in the Parc 55 hotel. Hits include Pretty Hot Wings — chicken, tangy with tamarind — and lovely rabbit meatballs bobbing in green curry balanced with coconut milk.
Lazy Bear, 3416 19th St., 415-874-9921, lazybearsf.com; Guests are asked to buy tickets and prepay online for a shot at one of two communal tables and a dinner party that stretches a dozen or so courses long. The evening starts with snacks on the mezzanine and continues in a lofty hall where every dish is announced by a cook. Worth your while: sweet pea custard with mint sauce, and rabbit and snails with stinging nettles.
Quince, 470 Pacific Ave., 415-775-8500, quincerestaurant.com; Everything about the restaurant created by chef Michael Tusk, an alumnus of Chez Panisse and Oliveto in the East Bay, spells luxe: the hush, the theater-length curtains, the delicate stemware, the $200, nine-course, French-Italian tasting menus that revel in the garden (or not; your choice). No detail escapes the restaurant’s attention. Dishes come with house-baked breads tailored to specific courses, and the confections trolley is the Rolls Royce of sweets delivery systems. Did we mention that one staff member’s sole task is to polish those fragile glasses?
Tadich Grill, 240 California St., 415-391-1849, tadichgrill.com; Much of the charm of one of the city’s longest-lived, no-reservations landmarks comes from the white-jacketed servers, straight out of Central Casting, and the scenery, all dark wood, snug alcoves and epic counter. Some dishes (sand dabs and crab cake) don’t taste as good as they used to, but you can count on the cioppino to brim with seafood and the rice custard pudding to make you smile.
Yank Sing, 49 Stevenson St., 415-541-4949, 101 Spear St., 415-781-1111, yanksing.com; Deemed an American Classic by the James Beard Foundation, this iconic Chinese brand, started in 1958 and with two locations, bustles with dim sum carts and chopsticks hoisting steamed pork buns, pearly shrimp dumplings and Peking duck. With some 60 dishes offered every day, there’s no getting bored.
Zuni Café, 1658 Market St., 415-552-2522, zunicafe.com; If there’s one restaurant that sums up the city, it’s this airy, two-story magnet for socialites, bohemians and other local characters. Musts include the fresh lime margarita, Caesar salad, roast chicken for two (be patient, it takes an hour) and espresso granita.
Bars
Bar Agricole, 355 11th St., 415-355-9400, baragricole.com; The handcrafted cocktails here in the SoMa neighborhood all cost $15 – and prove worth the price. The food (ricotta toast with brandied prunes, pork and lamb meatballs with fried herbs) is equal to the drinks. Belly up to the long bar, or grab a seat at the enticing front patio.
Trick Dog, 3010 20th St., 415-471-2999, trickdogbar.com; The menu at this industrial-looking Mission bar changes twice a year. One visit, the selections are based on a Pantone wheel; another time, they’re printed on record jackets. Currently, patrons are handed what looks like a Chinese menu. Surprise No. 1: Tequila blends well with absinthe, carrot and lemon. Surprise No. 2: The choice hamburger shows up in a hot dog bun.
Cafes and bakeries
Blue Bottle Coffee, multiple locations, bluebottlecoffee.com; Now available on two coasts and in Japan, this popular coffee roaster/cafe got its start in Oakland, where founder James Freeman vowed to sell only coffee that had been roasted within the past 48 hours. Lines form wherever the pour-over coffee is sold, including the Ferry Building.
B. Patisserie, 2821 California St., 415-440-1700, bpatisserie.com; Pastry chef Belinda Leong re-creates a Parisian salon de thé with her first-class croissants, macarons, tartines and kouign-amann, the last a sugar rush by way of Brittany. My current fascination, tomato sablés, brings to mind cheese straws gone to finishing school. “My favorite!” cries a clerk. “I even keep them in my car!”
Craftsman and Wolves, 746 Valencia St., 415-913-7713, craftsman-wolves.com; This sleek Mission bakery is a shout-out to artisans, recognizing the challenges they face in pursuit of their handiwork. Here, the handiwork includes the Travel Cake, made with coconut and roasted banana, and the Rebel Within, a sausage-cheese muffin that breaks open to reveal a soft-cooked farm egg. For the road: dark sipping chocolate, yuzu-almond caramels and pâtes de fruits in such intoxicating flavors as blood orange-campari and pineapple-mezcal.
Sightglass Coffee, 270 Seventh St., 3014 20th St.; 415-861-1313, sightglasscoffee.com; The SoMa flagship of this sibling-owned treasure (now with a newer, smaller location in the Mission) brings together the company offices, a handsome roaster and a sleek coffee bar under one timbered roof. Credit the airy feel to Sightglass’s predecessor, a sign manufacturing shop.
Shops and markets
Bi-Rite Market, 550 Divisadero St., 415-551-7900, 3639 18th St., 415-241-9760, biritemarket.com; If Bi-Rite doesn’t make you want to cook, no store will. Set off with an art deco front, the family-run shop – now in two locations – bursts with artisanal goods and produce, meat and fish that farmers and ranchers deliver themselves. From the kitchen: house-smoked salmon, and risotto made from scratch. Don’t miss the ice cream (inside the newer Divisadero Street shop and across 18th Street from the original location).
Ferry Building Marketplace, 1 Ferry Building, 415-983-8030, ferrybuildingmarketplace.com; Set off with a soaring clock tower based on one in Seville, this is a crown jewel among the nation’s food halls. The shops inside — Acme Bread Company, Cowgirl Creamery, McEvoy Ranch Olive Oil — carry some of our favorite labels, while the eateries entice with fresh seafood (Hog Island Oysters) and first-rate Southeast Asian fare (Slanted Door). On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the outside plaza plays host to a fabulous farmers market whose shoppers include some of the Bay Area’s top chefs.
Omnivore Books on Food, 3885a Cesar Chavez St., 415-282-4712, omnivorebooks.com; Rare-books specialist Celia Sack removed the preciousness of shopping for old food works by putting everything on display, encouraging people to touch the wares and turning the shop into a meeting place for authors. The 2,000 or so titles run the gamut, including a 1753 edition of “The Compleat Housewife” by Eliza Smith ($500) and a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” signed by Julia Child ($1,200). Omnivore also stocks the best contemporary cookbooks, including hard-to-find titles from chefs and restaurants in Europe and Australia.
The (Twitter) Market, 1355 Market St., 415-767-5130, visitthemarket.com; The founders of this collection of gourmet food counters and grocery aisles gathered at the base of the Twitter building want shoppers to think of the destination as the Eataly of Northern California. Items from fish to flowers are available in the sprawl of the former San Francisco Furniture Mart – for a price. An organic cold-pressed juice will set you back $10.
Zuni Espresso Granita With Whipped Cream
2 1/2 cups freshly brewed espresso, at room temperature (see note)
3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar, or more as needed
1 cup water
1/2 cup chilled heavy whipping cream
Kosher salt
Why mess with success? San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe follows the same basic recipe from Judy Rodgers’ 2002 “Zuni Cafe Cookbook” that you see here. Almost equal parts whipped cream and granita, it remains not overly sweet and quite refreshing.
Be sure to start with a strong, rich espresso; do not use instant.
Make ahead: The granita needs to be frozen for at least 8 hours. After it’s scored and cut, the frozen granita needs to return to the freezer for at least 30 minutes and up to a few hours. The whipped cream can be prepped and refrigerated a day in advance.
From the Zuni Cafe pastry kitchen.
Pour the espresso into a mixing bowl. Add 3/4 cup of the sugar and stir until dissolved. Taste it; it should seem a bit too sweet. If it doesn’t, add extra sugar by the 1/4 teaspoon until it does. Stir in the water. Pour into a shallow stainless-steel or glass pan that’s large enough so the mixture is no more than 1 inch deep. Freeze until solid; this may take up to 8 hours.
Choose a glass, plastic or metal container with a tight-fitting lid. Make sure it is dry, snap on the lid and place it in the freezer.
Once the espresso mixture has frozen solid, place the pan on a cool surface. Use a metal pastry scraper to cut a grid of evenly spaced lines, left to right and then top to bottom (to create squares). Use the scraper to gently toss the granita, then transfer it to the cold container. Cover and freeze for at least 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine the heavy whipping cream, the 3 tablespoons of sugar and the salt in the bowl of a stand mixer or handheld electric mixer. Beat on medium-low speed until frothy, then on high speed until soft peaks form.
Just before serving, gently toss the granita with a large fork (to redistribute any separated sugar).
Layer the granita and dollops of whipped cream alternately, parfait-style, in chilled serving glasses. There should be almost as much whipped cream as granita. Serve right away.
Makes 8 servings
Nutrition: Per serving: 130 calories, 0g protein, 20g carbohydrates, 6g fat, 4g saturated fat, 20mg cholesterol, 35mg sodium, 0g dietary fiber, 19g sugar
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