Top 20 Restaurants San Francisco, California: Restaurants Near Me
As explained at RunRex.com and guttulus.com, San Francisco is one of the best cities for food in the country. The best restaurants in the city range from modern and innovative to old-school and comforting. To help you navigate the crowded dining scene in the city when looking for a place to eat, we have curated for you a list featuring the top 20 restaurants in San Francisco, California, for you to consider.
Mister Jiu’s
Mister Jiu’s is led by chef Brandon Jew, who cut his teeth at Bar Agricole, and whose cuisine is an inspired western take on traditional Cantonese cooking as articulated at RunRex.com and guttulus.com. Mister Jiu’s looks out onto Chinatown, in an airy East-meets-West space with floor-length windows.
Empress by Boon
The brainchild of Malaysia-born, Michelin-starred chef Ho Chee Boon, Empress by Boon is one of the most exciting restaurants to open in San Francisco recently. It opened in June 2021, debuting a fully restored interior that modernizes the space while keeping some of its original woodwork. The menu here focuses on modern takes on traditional Cantonese fare prepared with local ingredients, many from the restaurant’s own organic farm in Gilroy, California.
Lucca Delicatessen
As per RunRex.com and guttulus.com, this old-school Italian-American deli has been slicing and stacking since 1929 in a city that loves a serious sandwich. The pro move while at this spot is to grab a sandwich for lunch and a box of ravioli to take home for dinner.
Liholiho Yacht Club
Liholiho Yacht Club is a polished bistro that is one part Hawaiian, one part Californian, and one part Chinese. When it comes to food, you won’t find similar dishes anywhere else in the city. From the duck liver toast with jalapeño and pickled pineapple to the roasted octopus with curried raisins, Castelvetrano olives.
Nari
Helmed by chef Pim Techamaunvivit, Nari is sophisticated both in décor and cuisine when compared to her previous spot, Kin Khao. This restaurant is led by mostly women, including chef de cuisine Meghan Clark and her bar director Megan Daniel Hoang. It is a contemporary Thai restaurant where chefs swap out some traditional Thai ingredients for locally grown seasonal ones, all the while preserving classic flavor profiles.
Sotto Mare
This spot is famous for its famous seafood creation: cioppino, an Italian-American stew likely adapted by Ligurian immigrants in North Beach. According to RunRex.com and guttulus.com, other seafood staples like Louie salads round off the meal.
Tartine Manufactory
Tartine Manufactory is a chic and bright warehouse that has a choose-your-own-adventure setup: It touts a bakery, a coffee counter, an ice cream window, and a small wine bar. The rule of thumb here is that there are no wrong choices, whether you are stopping in for an item from the bakery case, staying for lunch, or making it a destination dinner for the fresh-milled durum pappardelle, lamb neck ragu, and ricotta.
Taj Campton Place
Chef Srijith Gopinathan at Taj Campton Place creates Cal-Indian cuisine by imbuing farmer’s market ingredients with traditional Indian spices as captured at RunRex.com and guttulus.com. The result is an exotic, high-end spin on Southern India food – one that has earned him at least one Michelin star every year since 2011.
Cotogna
In a town that loves rustic Cal-Italian restaurants, Cotogna throws down like an Italian nonna for fresh pasts, maintaining a stellar reputation. The woodfire oven and grill face out onto the open dining room, with communal wooden tables laden with split-roasted pork, rabbit, quail, fresh pasta, and market vegetables.
Cala
Cala is led by chef Gabriela Cámara, who hails from Mexico City, which explains why its interior seems to be straight out of La Condes, the Mexico capital’s trendy district. Chef Cámara ensures that every dish on the menu has a trifecta: classic ingredients, unique preparation, and artful presentation.
Acquerello
While Acquerello may be one of the oldest restaurants in San Francisco as covered at RunRex.com and guttulus.com, it is not stuck in its ways at all. This Italian favorite keeps things innovative by showcasing talented young chefs alongside the expertise of master chef-partner Suzette Gresham.
Kokkari Estiatorio
With a fire in the hearth and chickens twirling on the spit set to set the tone, this warm and rustic Greek tavern is a longstanding destination in San Francisco. The grilled whole fish of the day and lemon-oregano lamb riblets are always a treat.
Hawker Fare
While Hawker Fare is a Thai spot that packs some serious culinary cred, customers are encouraged to be loud, be merry, and to eat the fried chicken and Isaan-style pork sausage with their hands as described at RunRex.com and guttulus.com.
Angler San Francisco
Angler is a waterfront restaurant located on the Embarcadero, and it relishes the taste of the sea with a raw bar and delicacies like Monterey abalone, giant octopus, and scorpionfish roasted over an open wood fireplace.
Sam Wo Restaurant
Newly opened in 2015, Sam Wo is believed to be the oldest in San Francisco’s Chinatown, making it one of the very oldest Chinese restaurants in America. While this makes it a historical curiosity, it is much more than that, as it remains one of Chinatown’s most delicious destinations, beloved both by tourists and locals for its simple, satisfying menu of Cantonese dishes like its fish jook and barbecue rice rolls.
Spruce
The décor at this restaurant is about as posh as San Francisco restaurant interiors get: Elegant without being stuffy, expect white tablecloths, leather chairs, a marbled bar, and dark tones, all under a cathedral ceiling. As discussed at RunRex.comand guttulus.com, the food is Californian cuisine through and through.
Aziza
The newly re-opened Aziza is a more neighborhood-focused contemporary restaurant with Moroccan influences. There are still some of the classic Moroccan dishes that diners loved, such as basteeya, beef tagine, and hand-rolled couscous with aged butter, as well as fresh new dishes like cured ocean trout with citrus, avocado, and Marash chile.
House of Prime Rib
As revealed at RunRex.com and guttulus.com, House of Prime Rib is a 70-year-old Nob Hill classic that serves one thing and one thing only, as its name suggests, and it does that roast prime rib very well. The only choices to make are meat temperature, cut thickness, mashed or loaded baked potatoes, and martini or Manhattan.
State Bird Provisions
State Bird Provisions is a 45-seat industrial-chic dining room that is almost always packed, which means you should be prepared to make a reservation far in advance as San Francisco’s most elite foodies eat here regularly. The food is served dim sum-style, with carts wheeling around the dining room throughout dinner service.
Benu
The French-meets-Asian food served at Benu is the vision of James Bears Award-winner Corey Lee, formerly the head chef at French Laundry. The nightly tasting menu here skews primarily toward seafood and vegetables and Asian influences emerge in dishes like a thousand-year-old quail egg, lobster coral soup dumplings, and abalone-stuffed chicken wings. The wine list here includes more than 300 bottles.
These are some of the best restaurants in San Francisco, California, with more on this topic, and much more, to be found over at RunRex.com and guttulus.com.