As the birthplace of California’s farm-to-table food movement, San Francisco has long had an embarrassment of riches when it comes to good food. Yes, incredible produce continues to serve as the backbone of Californian cuisine, and, yes, iconic restaurants like Chez Panisse and Zuni Café are still around. But the restaurant scene isn’t static; it’s constantly evolving, with new chefs and new restaurants making names for themselves and garnering praise from Bay Area diners and visitors alike.

To learn more about the city’s best dining options, we spoke with four of the city’s top chefs to find out their go-to spots. They gave us their picks for late-night burritos, Sunday brunch, splurge-worthy meals, and more. Preeti Mistry, chef–owner of Juhu Beach Club; Charles Phan, chef–owner of The Slanted Door Group; Matt Accarrino, chef–owner of SPQR; and Dominique Crenn, chef–owner of Atelier Crenn and Bar Crenn, all weighed in with their favorites to help us plot out this eaters’ roadmap.

Best Late-Night Eats
Our chefs’ late-night favorites include wok-fried scrambled eggs, tender tripe, and a veggie burrito worth waiting in line for in the wee hours of the morning.

Nopa is always bustling. It was a pioneer on Divisadero Street back in 2006, which has since become a busy area for restaurants. There’s one big, open room—the kitchen’s in the same room as the diners—with a mezzanine and one large communal bar. It’s a pretty lively vibe for sure, and you see a lot of industry people there.

I’m not a huge late-night person because I’m a big cyclist; I try to ride home early most nights. But if I end up at Nopa, I’ll eat the burger. It’s always really consistently good: wood-grilled, with pickled onions and a heap of crispy fries on the side. Even better, you know everything on the plate is locally sourced. I’m a habitual Rye Manhattan drinker, so I’ll wash it down with that.

The combination of reverence for the classics, and excitement around what’s new—think exceptional beer bars, boutique hotels with Thai small plates and zero-proof cocktails, and Michelin star-worthy bar bites—means a trip to San Francisco will keep you busy, whether you’re checking in on enduring favorites, sampling the best of the new, or hoping to do a little bit of both. Yuet Lee in Chinatown is for everyone: partygoers, cops—everybody eats there. It also looks a bit like an operating room. It’s got really bright lights and it’s painted fluorescent green. Yuet Lee is famous for its salt and pepper squid, but I always order the tripe; they boil it until it’s really tender and serve it with a sesame-and-soy sauce on top, and a really flavorful scallion dipping sauce on the side. I also get their wok stir-fried scrambled eggs, which are really soft and tender, and come garnished with scallions.

I lived in The Mission when I was in my early 20s and I didn’t have a lot of money. I was going out to bars a lot, and I’d always end up at Taqueria Cancun, which was usually packed, with a line out the door. It’s a rustic old taqueria with wooden picnic benches, so there’s a lot of dining communally. There’s also a long steam table where you watch the burritos and tacos being made as you wait in line. The best thing about a place like Taqueria Cancun is that you will see every type of person in there.

I love the veggie burrito. The cheese gets gooey and melty, and they put in fresh avocado chunks—literally scooping chunks out of half an avocado, and putting it in the burrito—so nothing gets soggy. [Ed’s note: the burrito also comes with rice, beans, onions, cilantro, salsa, and sour cream.]

When I was younger, I’d wait in line for the burrito on late nights out, but I could only ever eat two-thirds of it. The last third I would unearth the next morning from the refrigerator, and scramble all of the interior with eggs for breakfast.

Despite one chef joking that they’re “allergic to brunch,” their favorites—from classic dim sum with water views to Tunisian shakshuka in an ivy-covered courtyard—were each enthusiastically branded as can’t-miss, uniquely San Franciscan meals.

I love dim sum, especially for brunch, and I could eat at Hong Kong East Ocean all day. It’s out on the pier of Emeryville, Berkeley, past tiki bar mainstay Trader Vic’s, so you have that feeling of being on the water. It’s like you’re at a big hotel banquet hall, but with a gorgeous view of the Bay and Bay Bridge. There are big tanks of lobsters and crabs to stare at while you wait for a table. You tell them how many people you have in your party, then they give you a number and you wait for your number to be called, but they are so efficient and quick.

The servers come around with some items in carts, and they also give you a paper menu with photos, and you just go through and tick boxes of everything that you want. There’s instant gratification—you don’t sit there waiting for someone to take your drink order, then your food order. Before the server even comes around, someone’s like, “Do you want this?” And it’s like, “Yes, here we go.”

The big pork buns at Hong Kong East Ocean are amazing—I can’t have just one. They’re light and soft, and have that shiny glazed outside. I want to eat so many things there. Pro tip: don’t do deep-fried there because you’ll just get in the calamari, and then you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m so full, I can’t eat anything else.” There’s the Hong Kong-style rice noodles with a sweet sauce, really great smashed cucumbers with bright ginger, savory roast pork, and then a bunch of different dumplings. I started going to Foreign Cinema in the Mission years ago for brunch. It’s a wonderful place that features fresh California food. Right now, they have a Tunisian shakshuka with eggs, zucchini, and feta—it’s delicious. And you can get a version of Pop-Tarts made with organic strawberries or nectarines. Chef Gayle Pirie and John Clark, who both used to work at Zuni Café, have been doing this for a long time. I love that it’s such a cool spot with beautiful outdoor seating in the courtyard—and, of course, you should come back for dinner when there are movies playing and lights strung everywhere.

One unique place in San Francisco is this place called Andytown, just a few blocks from Golden Gate Park. They now have a couple of locations, but I love the original spot—a tiny postage stamp of a space. They used every inch in this first location, and you virtually order at the espresso machine. There is ample outdoor seating and bike racks right in front. It’s clearly a vibrant part of the neighborhood and a popular meeting place on the weekend, when lines are longer. Mid-morning, mid-week is usually the most chill time to drop in.

Besides the great coffee (which they roast themselves), they are known for a drink called the “Snowy Plover,” which is like a whipped cream coffee–soda kind of thing. Maybe more importantly, they have a whole in-house bakery program. They make jam-stuffed muffins, and these little things that look like Pop-Tarts. But the best things they have are the Irish scones they cook on a griddle. You can get the scones a couple of different ways, but my favorite is to have them split one—it’s kind of like a cross between an English scone and a biscuit, but not as flaky—and griddle it with butter, then put a triangle of raw-milk Cheddar and a strip of warm bacon on each side.

From places with thoughtful mocktails to one that puts out a perfectly executed Old Fashioned, the chefs had strong opinions about where to get a drink.
There’s a place called Nari that just opened in Japantown from chef Pim Techamuanvivit. It’s a brand new space in Hotel Kabuki. The bar upstairs is separate from the restaurant and it’s a really cool, well-designed space. There’s a mix of wood and concrete, and lots of plants throughout, and upstairs it feels really cozy and intimate, with a window that looks down into the kitchen. It’s a place that I feel comfortable in because the whole bar is separate from the restaurant, and you’re not taking up a dining seat. In San Francisco, you don’t see that very often.

In addition to making amazing alcoholic drinks, Nari has a non-alcoholic beverage program. I thought it was really interesting that they’re going through all these steps to make zero-proof drinking feel special. They use cool glassware, and pour tableside, and they have a drink similar to a gin and tonic.

In addition to making amazing alcoholic drinks, Nari has a non-alcoholic beverage program. I thought it was really interesting that they’re going through all these steps to make zero-proof drinking feel special. They use cool glassware, and pour tableside, and they have a drink similar to a gin and tonic.

Bar Agricole in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood is my favorite place for drinks. It’s sleek and pretty hip: a super-modern loft with a contemporary dining room and two bars. There’s a patio with an organic vegetable garden out front, and it’s very tranquil.

They make a great Old Fashioned, using cognac—even though I usually just do it with bourbon. It’s so hard to make an Old Fashioned. It seems easy, but there are many ways for you to screw it up—every part of it! Too much syrup, or the wrong spirit, too much bitters, or the wrong kind of ice. If you don’t use a big ice block, it’ll melt too fast, and you’ll have a watery drink. (And I’m a fast drinker, by the way. Imagine if you’re a slow drinker!) In any case, you just can’t go wrong with Bar Agricole.

Roses’ Taproom is relatively new. It just opened a couple of years ago in Temescal, a neighborhood in Oakland, and it’s just a really cute space. A lot of the beer places in the city tend to be kind of gross—sort of macho and smelly—and Roses’ is just like a nice, clean, well-lit place for fancy beers.

They brew their own beer right there, and then they have some beers from other local breweries. They also have a nice selection of almonds, olives, and charcuterie, and stuff like that. I was super into the hazy IPA for awhile, but now I’m really loving their tropical IPAs—a little bit more refreshing, but still very hoppy.

When I go out to drink cocktails, it’s at Trick Dog, a really cool place in the Mission with fun people. The decor is dark and minimal, almost like an old saloon, and it’s very tiny. If you want to sit and have a long conversation over a drink, then you better get there as soon as it opens, because the later it becomes, the more fans come pouring through the doors.

My first thought whenever I enter Crisp’s cheerful little storefront is “Glad I’m not a chicken.” Because it seems like every person eating here has a jumbo wing or drumstick in hand, alongside a piled-high plate of gnawed bones.

Korean fried chicken is the house specialty, and Crisp does a bang-up job with it. They cook up a bird with a delicate crunch to its skin, which gives way to super-tender meat beneath. Add the slightly sweet soy-ginger Seoul Sassy sauce, and it’s hard to refrain from going full-on carnivore.

Before there were out-the-door queues for whiskey caramel pecan doughnuts at Doughnut Vault and spiced maple chai doughnuts at Do-Rite, there was Dat Donut. Since 1994, owners Darryl and Andrea Townson have been baking deep on the South Side in Chatham. Dat’s confections whirl out on a lazy Susan from behind bulletproof glass—you point to what you want, and whoever’s at the window loads it onto the tray and spins it around.

The device is hardly big enough to contain the shop’s pièce de résistance—the Big Dat, a pumped-up glazed doughnut that’s a full seven inches in diameter. Even behind thick glass, under fluorescent light, its icing glimmers and dazzles. Bite into one, and your mouth gets hit with the perfect amount of sweet before the glaze gives way to the fresh, spongy dough, which is remarkably light—less greasy than yeasty.

Dat’s thick, tangy, and doughy custard doughnut ranks a close second, with its eggy filling and powdered-sugar exterior. Then there are the chocolate long johns, apple fritters, Boston creams—the shelves hold at least 20 more types, too. Dat makes them 24 hours a day, six days a week, taking a break only on Sunday nights (and, since the staff replenishes the racks frequently, you’re bound to get a fresh doughnut every time).

The shop itself is small, though you can linger and watch the bakers kneading, hand-cutting, and frying the dough behind the big glass window in back. The Townsons do a powerful thing here: They make kickass doughnuts, while also providing jobs and a little extra sweetness to a struggling community that truly appreciates their presence.

Despite its poultry prowess, my favorite thing at Crisp is a vegetarian dish, and the restaurant’s other claim to fame: the veggie-rich Buddha Bowl, a version of Korean bibimbap (mixed vegetables with rice). I lust for the Bad Boy Buddha, which heaps eight types of chilled, marinated vegetables—bean sprouts, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, cucumber, spinach, corn, and radish—over steamed rice, with a runny fried egg plunked on top. It’s hot, cold, soft, crunchy, sweet, and spicy all at once.

You can also get a Baby Buddha (with four veggies) or a Big Boy Buddha (with 12), but the Bad Boy strikes the perfect balance. It’s good-mood food, and you can’t help but be in happy spirits here, thanks to the friendly dudes working the counter, the festive lime-green color scheme, and the slew of fizzy drink options that accompany the food.

I’ve been chowing down in Chicago for almost 30 years now, but I never get bored with the menu here. Probably because my adopted hometown mixes the depth and worldliness of a big city with all the culinary pluses of a small one.

First off, you can eat well in Chicago without spending a ton of money. It’s also terrifically laid-back. The restaurants I love don’t put on airs, and, for the most part, I can turn up in jeans and flip-flops and be welcomed to fork into an awesome meal. Restaurateurs from around the globe have set up shop in the city, meaning I can get a Lithuanian bacon bun or a multilayered Serbian walnut cookie or Senegalese rice and fish stew with equal ease, should the craving arise.

So, yeah, there’s good eatin’ here. Sure, big-name chefs have gone wild in neighborhoods like the West Loop, Wicker Park, and Logan Square. And that’s all fine and dandy, especially since even the buzziest restaurants are get-at-able. But my list of essential Chicago food experiences sticks more to classics: a rich and nostalgia-inducing hot fudge sundae, a stiff Martini, a good old-fashioned diner omelette, and—sorry, it can’t be helped—a big, doughy, and, yes, deep, Chicago-style stuffed pizza.

It’s easy to imagine this frozen-in-time ice cream parlor scooping up something sweet for Al Capone and the Beatles (which it has). The red-neon-lit shop has been around since 1921, and it looks the part. Kitschy knickknacks clutter the shelves, and mini jukeboxes charm on the tables. Sweet tooths of all ages scooch into the tight vinyl booths, panting for one thing: Margie’s sundaes.

They arrive on a silver platter, in a white clamshell bowl, alongside a silver gravy boat of hot fudge. The latter is key. You see, Margie’s also makes chocolate, so the shop’s not messing around when it comes to its rich, thick fudge. Margie’s whips up its own 18% butterfat ice cream, too. Regular sundaes contain two or three mighty scoops, plus whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry—add the hot-fudge gravy boat, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to fail at eating the whole thing, which is not to say you shouldn’t try.

Margie herself ran the shop until she passed away in 1995, but her spirit remains, along with her bloodline. Margie’s family still runs the timeless parlor, and here’s hoping they always will.

Walking into Dove’s Luncheonette in Wicker Park, I grab a stool at the stainless steel counter, and a waitress with jangly hoop earrings and bright-red lipstick plunks down a steaming mug of coffee before I can even get my coat off. Soul music drifts from the record player, and rows of tequila bottles rattle behind the bar.

The wood-paneled diner time-warps me back a half century to a dusty Rio Grande town, a place where drifters might stop in for a quick sandwich and shot under the lazily spinning ceiling fans. It’s like being in a Nelson Algren novel—which is smack where Dove’s draws its inspiration from: It’s named after A Walk on the Wild Side hustler Dove Linkhorn, and modeled after the joints of his era.

Meanwhile, Dove’s 125 tequilas and mezcals flow from morning to nightfall. I didn’t realize so many Chicagoans drank the hard stuff before 11 a.m., but they do at Dove’s. Nelson Algren would be proud.

Here, though, the customers aren’t down-and-out types, but rather tattooed and beanie-clad neighborhood folks. And the Tex-Mex menu isn’t typical diner fare, but a hot-spiced step up. The chicken-fried chicken, doused with spicy chorizo gravy and accompanied with sweet peas, shows how it’s done. The addictive hash, mixing crazy-crisp potatoes, blistered shishito peppers, and queso fresco, can be scarfed all day. Alas, you’ll need to be an early riser to experience the flapjack covered in granola and bittersweet Mexican-chocolate sauce. Dove’s serves it sizzling in a cast iron skillet, and it’s thick enough to merit the “cake” in “pancake.” An extra $1.50 gets you a fried egg atop anything on the menu.

It stacks up like this: a layer of dough, followed by mozzarella cheese, another layer of dough, then sauce and toppings. Did you catch that? Cheese is packed between two crusts, not laid on top of one, as with traditional deep-dish. Giordano’s bakes the mightiest version, an insanely hulking pie whose slices weigh more than a half pound each and whose crust rises two inches off the plate to cradle the mound of tangy sauce. It’s comfort food supreme—soft, warm, and so, so filling.

Most recipes call for boiling the root whole before cutting it into batons and frying them. I wondered what would happen if I cut first then boiled.

Here’s what I saw:
You can tell right away that the boiled-then-cut baton on the left is unevenly cooked. It has a creamy, gelatinized side (the side that was on the exterior), and a fluffy, starchy side. The baton that was cut-then-boiled was more uniform.

Which would fry up into a better chip?
I fried them both in 350°F peanut oil until crisp.

Again, you can see the difference. The boiled-then-cut chip on the left is smoother, with fewer crags and nooks in its surface, than the cut-then-boiled chip on the right. Biting into them revealed that the one of the right had not only far more crunch, but a much better creamy center. The one of the left was tender, but left a powdery, dry aftertaste in my mouth.

Taskin also has a flattop devoted to gozleme, a tissue-thin flatbread stuffed with fillings like cheese, greens, or meat, then folded over on itself to form a neat, floppy pocket. Go for one filled with spinach and cheese and you’ll be rewarded with greaseless, feather-light bread, barely wilted fresh greens, and lightly salty cheese. You’ll wonder why it’s not on every New York street corner. Just down the street from Taskin you’ll find Toros, a mini-chain of three north Jersey Turkish restaurants. This location, which identifies as the Clifton branch (not to be confused with the Paterson branch nearby) is a dark, velvet-drawn room that recalls some Russian oligarch’s country home. Befitting of the grand setting is a menu that covers the full range of salads, mezze, and grilled Turkish meat. AK also has a butcher counter where you’ll find homemade sujuk, a pepperoni-like beef or lamb sausage perked up with chili and garlic. While imported sujuk is relatively common in Middle Eastern markets, AK’s is better—less fatty and harsh-tasting with a snappy casing and fresh meaty flavor. Slice it up and fry it to serve with eggs, or better yet, use it in place of pepperoni on your next pizza. You’ll get great grease cups.

As a die-hard New Yorker I hate to admit it, but sometimes you gotta go to Jersey.

What does the Garden State have that the Big Apple lacks? For starters, a wealth of space and comparatively affordable housing, two attributes that have helped cities like Edison, Fort Lee, and Newark become home to some of the tri-state area’s largest ethnic communities. And where large populations of immigrants go, good food follows—in some cases better than its equivalent offerings in New York.

Take Paterson, a silk factory city that fell into post-industrial decline but is now enjoying a second life thanks to its new middle class. The new blood is eclectic—Paterson is home to Hispanic, Arab, Filipino, Asian, and Turkish populations—and as a result, its food scene is impressively diverse. From Manhattan, getting there takes all of half an hour by car, or an hour on NJ Transit.

It was the promise of great Turkish cooking that that sent SE designer Tracie and me on a field trip to Paterson. While New York has some great Turkish food if you know where to look, most of it leaves some room for improvement. Could Jersey do us one better?

South Paterson’s Turkish sector is far more condensed than New York’s, with a tight cluster of restaurants, kebab houses, bakeries, and groceries. Short diversions will take you to late-night diners, WPA-era outdoor markets, and Hispanic stores selling treasures like dirt-cheap key limes and Peruvian pepper paste.

In short: come for an afternoon and you’ll find more food than you can handle. Looking for an introduction to the city’s Turkish scene? Here’s an afternoon itinerary to get you started. Paterson is full of markets to stock up on Middle Eastern provisions, but AK Market’s selection is especially impressive. There’s a full compliment of yogurts and cheeses, including hard-to-find nabulsi, a salty semi-soft cheese flavored with nigella seeds, and Istanbuli, a cream-cheese like spread flavored with grassy green chili. Among the dry goods you’ll find excellent hazelnuts, especially fresh and aromatic, alongside all manner of other nuts, legumes, grains, and spices available in bulk at low prices.

Begin at Taskin Bakery, which supplies bread both to local restaurants and many of New York’s Middle Eastern markets. Turkish cuisine has a bread culture just as rich as the French, and Taskin’s wide selection does it proud. On the shelves you’ll find flaky croissant-like pastries, syrupy phyllo sweets, briny olive breads, and best of all, simit, crackly-chewy doughnut-shaped breads blitzed with sesame seeds. Fresh from the oven, Taskin’s simit are just as good as what you’ll find in Istanbul, where they’re relished for breakfast much like bagels are in New York. The best time to hit Toros is at lunch, when they offer a three-course lunch special of a soup or salad, your choice of mezze, and a grilled main. Coordinate with your table and you can hack together a shareable feast, all for just $12 a person. Toros does a mean lentil soup, excellent eggplant dishes, and well-seasoned lamb kebabs.

Now, things are different. Now, Nairobi is shut down because of COVID-19. Travel in and out of the city is banned, and there’s a countrywide curfew from dusk to dawn. Social distancing regulations announced by the government early during Kenya’s infection mean that restaurants and eateries remain closed, unless they meet stringent health requirements.

Mutura, mara, smokies, and other Kenyan street foods rely on very strict market bases: First, they rely on the evening crowd, people on their way home from work, who buy them before they get back to the house for their real food; then, they rely on the folks out drinking, saa za ulevi (when people are drinking), which is why a lot of mutura is usually sold near bars. The curfew in effect in Kenya means that mutura sellers have a window of an hour, maybe two, in which to sell off their stock. This, coupled with the fact that people are rushing to get home, means that for many mutura sellers, it isn’t worth the risk.

This is what I know: I miss mutura. I miss the easy banter at the mutura place, people talking about their lives, maybe football, maybe how they are going to go out that night. I miss the mutura sellers flirting with some of their customers, cutting them mutura in lieu of verbal flirting. I miss the babas who come in with their big cars and their big bellies, park by the side of the road, and order mutura for 200 bob because big man, big food. I miss the little kids who come in, feeding on a new taste, and the other customers shouting at the seller not to add chile, because these are kids, can you not see? I miss my friend, M., calling me, asking if I’m in the house, and driving over so that we can go to my mutura base, where he will say such things as, “Mutura is like sex.”