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.

Helados de Paila: Ecuador
Ecuador’s version of ice cream, helado de paila, dates back to 1896 when 16-year-old Rosalía Suárez, of Ibarra, Ecuador, harvested ice and snow down from a nearby peak. More than a century later, it’s still made as she first prepared it: A large copper wok is placed in a basin over ice and straw, and filled with concentrated fruit juices (for sorbet) or a cream-milk-egg mixture (for ice cream). Then, the liquid is continuously stirred and spun with a wooden spoon until it begins to freeze, harden, and create a pliable, soft consistency. Street vendors will prepare the helado de paila to order and serve immediately, while most ice cream shops make it in advance and store in low temperature freezers. Popular flavors include blackberry, mango, chocolate, coconut, pineapple, tamarind, passion fruit, and unusual local fruits including guanábana (soursop) and sour naranjilla (which looks like a baby orange, but has a markedly acidic flavor). The original Doña Rosalia’s ice cream parlor is still owned by the Suárez family in Ibarra.

Mutura, a Kenyan spiced goat sausage enriched with the blood, has a complicated history and a controversial reputation. But to love mutura is to love the culture that surrounds it.
Mutura—viz., a fire-grilled delicacy made from goat and/or cow and/or lamb intestines sewn together and stuffed with a mixture bound by fresh blood (and, among the Maasai, laced with fat that melts when you grill it)—is part of the global tradition of blood sausages. Ireland has black pudding, France has boudin noir, South Korea has soondae, and Spain has morcilla. Kenya has mutura.

Sometimes translated into English as “African blood sausage” in that mannerless way we have of translating non-English things into English, mutura is richer than its European relatives, as it’s packed with a powerful blend of spices. Mutura will have ginger; it will have garlic; it will have scallions, cilantro, and chile so fine and wonderful a person weeps for joy while eating it. Nothing else matters. Expositions about Kenyan food will talk about nyama choma, ugali, chapati, etc. But mutura, that’s where it’s at.

Three months—or even one—may seem like quite the time investment, but being, well, preserved, the cured lemons will last in the back of your fridge for up to a year. And a little goes a very long way to adding that touch of umami and an alluring depth to your cooking.

You don’t need to become an expert at couscous or find room in your kitchen for a stoneware tagine to make use of preserved lemons. Pluck one from the jar, rinse it off, and add it to everything that calls for lemon—and everything that doesn’t. (As Paula Wolfert notes in her headnote on preserved lemons, “fresh lemons are never an adequate substitute” in recipes that call for the preserved variety, though preserved lemons are a fine—perhaps better!—substitute in recipes calling for fresh.)

It ups the ante and brings out all of its surrounding flavors.”) Or follow North African tradition and simply put a bowlful out on the dinner table—it might just become your newest favorite condiment.

One consequence of the colonial government’s anti-African housing and employment policies was that the areas of the city in which the Africans lived acquired the reputation of being “slums,” or enclaves of poor people, and carried with that reputation its attendant myths. As outlined by the non-profit Share the World’s Resources, the first myth is that there are too many people in slums, the second that the poor are to blame, and the third that slums are places of crime, violence, and social degradation. After independence, the African government in power in Kenya made few attempts to end the discriminatory housing policies, and so mutura, as well as all the other practices of the African quarters, remained as something to be sneered at by the urbane and educated in Nairobi, and the idea of mutura as food for poor people persisted. To this day, mutura is only sold in certain areas in Nairobi, and these are rarely, if ever, upper-class residential areas.

Walking through parts of the city after dusk, especially streets in lower- and middle-income neighborhoods, one will often find groups of people eating mutura. The setup is normally the same: Mr. Mutura Server (almost always mister, for reasons I don’t fully understand), clad in a white lab coat with flecks of blood on it (anything less cannot be trusted) and gumboots, works on a grill, atop which are placed rolls of mutura. Sometimes, there is soup nearby, the soup being a liquid made from crushed goat and cow hooves that are boiled—an acclaimed hangover cure, according to mutura enthusiasts. Coalesced around the mutura server is a crowd of people, maybe three people, maybe eight people for the very popular mutura sellers. Behind them, there is always a road, because mutura is always eaten amid a cacophony of vehicular sounds and dust.

Sometimes, one eats mutura along with kachumbari, a salad made from tomatoes, onions, chiles, and parsley, and sometimes not. But one will always ask for the mutura bit by bit. Like, twenty shillings, the first round; then, another twenty. And another. And another. This happens regardless of how much mutura one wanted to have beforehand. Clifton, a veteran mutura eater, tells me, “I always do ya twenty. Then add another. Sometimes mara. Nowadays they don’t do ten bob. But it also depends on the type of mutuch [mutura]. There’s the really thick ones that are filling and then the slim ones, the ones that crumble when you try to cut. I can do for sixty those.”

Form there, the options are manifold. In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee suggests that a solution of 5 to 10% salt is needed to achieve a good North African–style preserved lemon. (As a reference, olives call for the same percentage.) A proper Indian pickled lemon calls for double that amount, as well as turmeric, fenugreek seeds, and chili powder. Or take a tip from Sortun, who encourages you to make a batch with fragrant, sweet Meyer lemons when they’re in season. You can also add cloves, mustard seed, or mace—just a few of the spices popularized by the British in the 19th century. Meanwhile, Admony uses a 70% salt to 30% sugar mix and adds chili and paprika, for a smoky, spicy twist, and turmeric, for color. She also lets her lemons ferment for a full three months. But if you’re in a hurry, Paula Wolfert has a five-day pickled method. Admony notes that she’s “even seen some chefs make a sous vide version in 12 hours,” which, she laughs, isn’t as good as the real thing, but certainly works in a pinch.

Swap out regular lemons for preserved ones in your go-to recipes for roast chicken and fish or grilled meats. For an easy weeknight meal, toss pasta with some good olive oil, a little garlic, and chopped preserved lemon peel. Impress your friends at brunch by mixing a little of the zesty preserving liquid into Bloody Marys and swirling chopped peel into yogurt with a little honey. And impress them again at dinner by adding a twist on the peel in your Martini. Use preserved lemons to liven up potato or grain salads, or to enhance your salad dressing, hummus, or even, Admony suggests, guacamole. Solomonov even likes to freeze his, then grate the peel for granita. (He also adds a pro tip: Don’t toss the leftover preserving liquid. Instead, “sprinkle it on vegetables or fish before baking. It ups the ante and brings out all of its surrounding flavors.”) Or follow North African tradition and simply put a bowlful out on the dinner table—it might just become your newest favorite condiment.

Depending on your neighborhood, or how far you’re willing to travel, you can likely buy a jar of preserved lemons ready to eat. It’s just as easy, however, to make them yourself. The simplest and most delicious method calls for nothing more than lemons, salt, and patience (our own take also adds a touch of sugar for sweetness). It goes like this: Start with a handful of lemons. Cut each fruit into quarters lengthwise, without slicing through the base, and transfer them to a large bowl, tossing them with salt (and sugar, if using), before covering and refrigerating them overnight. The next day, the lemons will have released quite a bit of liquid, and you can transfer the entire contents of the bowl to a canning jar, pressing the lemons down firmly until they’re completely submerged. Seal the jar tightly and store it in a cool place for a month or longer—this is one of those things that get even better with age. The result is a lemon with a velvety peel and an intense yet mellow lemony character—whose “texture is soft and flavor is deep,” says Sortun.

A glass clamp jar with lemons and salt, the ingredients for making preserved lemons.
Clara Inés Schuhmacher
Originally, lemons were preserved for the same reason all things are preserved—to store and eat them past their season. Mary Ellen Snodgrass, author of the Encyclopedia of Kitchen History, traces their earliest reference to an 11th-century account of Arab Mediterranean cuisine (that is, cuisine from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco). An actual recipe surfaces in the 12th-century Egyptian treatise On Lemon, Its Drinking and Use, by the Arabic-speaking court physician Ibn Jumay. Jumay’s recipe, now some nine centuries old, is almost exactly the recipe of today. According to Toby Sonneman’s Lemon: A Global History, the recipe called for “slitting the fruit and filling the gashes with salt, then pressing them into a jar, covering with lemon juice and letting them ferment for weeks.”

Over the past thousand years, these salt-cured lemons have made a meandering journey north and west, joining the cuisines of Israel, Iran, Turkey, and India. But it wasn’t until far more recently that they began to appear in English-language cookbooks.

Boston chef Ana Sortun has a name for that: lemon umami. “Preserved lemons add a fermented quality that a regular lemon would not,” she says. Sortun, who first encountered preserved lemons when she worked for the Tunisian-born chef Moncef Meddeb some 22 years ago, was so taken with the condiment, and Eastern Mediterranean cooking in general, that she opened her own restaurant, Oleana, to honor the cuisine. Chef Michael Solomonov, best known for his landmark Philadelphia restaurant Zahav, agrees: “Sometimes it just doesn’t cut it to squeeze a lemon on top of a dish, and that’s when preserved lemons come into play. They add a big punch of flavor: heavy citrus, heavy floral notes from the oils in the peel, and ultimately heavy umami. It’s that extra something in the background of a dish that piques your curiosity.”

Israeli-born chef Einat Admony, of the Middle Eastern restaurant Balaboosta, in New York, is similarly effusive in her praise. For her, preserved lemons are, simply, “insane.” So much so that she “literally uses them in everything.”

So what is this lemon that is not quite a lemon—that is more than a lemon? Let’s take a look.

Why Preserved Lemons Belong on Your Shelf
Preserved lemons add a huge punch of citrus and umami flavor that ordinary lemons can’t match. Here’s how to start incorporating them into your cooking, or make your own preserved lemons at home.
A glass clamp jar with lemons and salt, the ingredients for making preserved lemons.
Fresh lemons are a workhorse in my kitchen, finding their way into everything from ice cream and tarts, to bitters and homemade cheese, to my go-to household cleaner. In fact, I thought I’d pretty much exhausted my uses for lemons—that is, until a fall afternoon in 2006, when I met a friend for lunch at the then-new-to-me Café Mogador in New York’s East Village. She knowingly ordered us matching chicken tagines without even glancing at the menu. The dish was unlike anything I had ever tasted: intensely lemony, with a depth I couldn’t place. It was so much more than the lemon chicken it appeared to be on the plate. I later learned that its unique flavor came from preserved lemons, which added an irresistible complexity to an otherwise straightforward chicken.

Though there are cursory mentions in 18th-century texts, like The Experienced English Housekeeper, preserved lemons were most likely introduced to American audiences in the mid-1970s, through Paula Wolfert’s James Beard Hall of Fame cookbook, Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco, and Claudia Roden’s subsequent A Book of Middle Eastern Food.

And yet, despite making their way into some American pantries 40-odd years ago, they have retained their aura of exoticism in the United States. Admony laughs as she tells the story of how, when she moved to New York in 1999 to work at Tabla, she showed her Tunisian-cum-Israeli style of preserved lemons to the restaurant’s celebrated chef, Floyd Cardoz—in her estimation, a master of spices—and his kitchen staff “had no clue; they had never seen them before.”

While you’re most likely to find preserved lemons in traditional preparations—Algerian couscous dishes fragrant with olives and raisins, Indian curries, Tunisian chickpea stews, and, yes, the Moroccan chicken tagine—they’re a worthy addition to a wide spectrum of meals.

To a liquid measuring cup or small bowl, add light coconut milk (or other dairy-free milk), apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and vanilla extract (optional) and whisk to ensure there are no clumps. Let this curdle while you prepare the other ingredients for the cobbler topping.
In a large mixing bowl, combine potato starch, almond flour, coconut sugar, salt, and baking powder. Whisk to combine.
Add coconut oil to dry ingredients and use a pastry cutter, fork, or clean hands to cut the oil into the flour until well combined and it resembles the texture of wet sand.
Add wet mixture (dairy-free milk + apple cider vinegar) to the dry mixture and stir to combine into a wet dough. It should be a little crumbly but moldable with your hands. If looking too crumbly, add more coconut milk; if too wet, add more almond flour or potato starch.
Using a small or medium cookie scoop or spoon (~1 ½ Tbsp // avoid using a larger scoop or the biscuits may be doughy in the center), top berry filling with clumps of the cobbler dough. For best biscuit texture, DO NOT press down on biscuits. They should look rustic!
Place cobbler in the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes. The fruit should be bubbling and the cobbler biscuits golden brown. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving to help the fruit firm up.
Serve warm with vegan vanilla ice cream or coconut whipped cream (optional). Store cooled leftovers covered in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Biscuits can be frozen for up to 1 month before baking and added when ready to bake.
Video

Notes
*Make sure your coconut oil is scoopable (the state it’s typically in when you buy it at the store), not liquid. If it’s too liquidy and pourable, this will negatively affect the biscuits. To fix, set jar in refrigerator to firm up for 30 minutes, then stir and let rest another 30 minutes at room temperature. The oil should be consistently solid, not partially solid and partially liquid. Repeat this process (of chilling, stirring, resting) until the right texture is achieved.
*Nutrition information is a rough estimate calculated with 1 ½ cups each of raspberries, blackberries, and cherries, and without optional ingredients.

BERRY FILLING
4 ½ cups fresh or frozen berries (we used 2 cups frozen raspberries, 2 cups blackberries, and 1/2 cup cherries // if fresh, remove stems and roughly chop // for a more tart cobbler, use tart berries such as raspberries)
1/3 cup coconut sugar (or sub organic cane sugar // reduce by up to half if you prefer less sweet desserts)
2 Tbsp arrowroot powder (or sub cornstarch)
1 tsp lemon zest (optional)
COBBLER TOPPING
1/4 cup canned light coconut milk (or sub other dairy-free milk)
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
3/4 cup potato starch (or sub all-purpose GF flour blend, but biscuits will be slightly more gummy)
3/4 cup almond flour (or sub finely ground cashews or another nut or seed flour)
2 Tbsp coconut sugar (or sub organic cane sugar)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
3 Tbsp solid* refined coconut oil (or sub chilled vegan butter)
FOR SERVING optional
Vegan vanilla ice cream
Coconut yogurt
Coconut whipped cream
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 C) and get out an 8 x 8-inch ceramic or glass baking dish.
To the baking dish, add fruit, sugar, arrowroot powder (or cornstarch), and lemon zest (optional) and stir to evenly coat. Set aside to let the flavors meld.

Stirring frozen berries, coconut sugar, arrowroot powder, and lemon zest
Mixing the berries with coconut sugar and letting them sit is a technique called maceration (you can think of it like marinating). By some science magic, the sugar draws moisture from the fruit and forms bonds (okay, that’s enough science for today, kids). The important part is that it makes juicy, tender, saucy fruit! And by adding arrowroot powder or cornstarch, the fruit thickens with baking.

Spoon in a baking dish of mixed berries
Next, we make the flaky, vegan, gluten-free, grain-free biscuits! We know, it’s sorcery, friends!

Mixing almond flour, potato starch, coconut sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl
Our trusty combination of almond flour and potato starch makes them light and fluffy, while coconut milk and oil make them rich and flaky. Add the other biscuit essentials like salt, baking powder, and (coconut) sugar, and you’ve got the most perfect cobbler topping!

Mixing gluten-free cobbler dough
Gently scooping the biscuit dough over the berry mixture (and avoiding pressing it down) gives the biscuits a golden brown exterior and prevents them from getting mushy.

Scooping biscuit dough over macerated berries
We hope you LOVE this berry cobbler!