Bay Area Recommendations

Bakeries

San Francisco

• Rolling Out Cafe - Irish sausage rolls are so. good.

• Mr Bread Bakery - pineapple buns and Portuguese (Macanese) egg tarts

• B Patisserie - get the kouign amann, banana chocolate croissant

• Neighbour Bakehouse - blackberry pistachio croissant, ginger pull-apart, apple handpie

• Tartine Bakery or Tartine Manufactory - regular croissant, ham & cheese croissant, morning bun, house-roasted coffee is great too

• Ariscault Bakery - classic butter croissant

• Acme Bread - for bread. The epi pain is great as a ripapart baguette.

Restaurants

San Francisco

• El Gallo Giro Taco Truck - our favourite place for carnitas tacos in the Mission

• El Patron - birria, shrimp, and fried fish tacos

• Hard Knox Cafe - two locations, fried chicken & corn bread. Need I say more?

• Liholiho - tuna poke on seaweed cracker, beef tongue bao, roasted cauliflower, fried chicken / game hen.

• Nabe (2 locations) - Japanese nabe, they make a porridge with your soup at the end. Get the Kimchi + Kurobuta Pork set and order it with the pork shoulder. Amazing.

• Mid-range sushi - Oma, Tsubasa, Sushi Zone, Eiji (their homemade tofu is great too!)

• Seafood

  • PPQ Dungeness Island - Roast crab or Salt+Pepper crab. Garlic noodles. Spoon the roast crab garlic butter over the garlic noodles. Amaze

  • Thanh Long - Viet roasted crab

  • Swan Oyster Depot - start lining up at 9:45AM latest if you want first seating.

  • Hog Island Oyster Co - recommend coming at odd hours so you don’t have to wait

• Italian

  • Itria - really great housemade pastas

  • Italian Homemade - multiple locations, but I recommend the linked original. Down-to-earth delicious homemade pasta

  • Pizza Delfina - multiple locations, great pizzas, get the tripe appetizer

  • Montesacro Pinseria-Enoteca - Roman style pizza called “pinsa”. Lighter and just as yummy as pizza. Delicious appetizers too

  • La Ciccia

• Chinese

  • Sichuan Home - spicy food

  • Yindu Wonton Noodle - wonton noodle soups and congee

  • Terra Cotta Warrior - Xian food

  • Fondue Chinoise - Sichuan hotpot

Oakland + Berkeley

• Vik’s Chaat (East Bay) - fantastic Indian food. Batata Puri, cholle batture, chicken biryani, lamb biryani, lamb baida roti

• Ramen

  • Marafuku Oakland location - deluxe chicken is really good

  • Shinmai

• Emilia’s Pizzeria - Gina calabrese

• Great China - best Peking duck

• Ippuku - really good yakitori in Berkeley

Rest of Bay Area

• Bing’s Dumpling (Fremont) - Excellent XLB (the best in the bay?)

• Mama Chef (Santa Clara) - Casual Taiwanese, excellent beef noodle soup (the best in the bay?) and other Taiwanese snacks

• Red Hot Wok (Cupertino) - Taiwanese

• China Bee (San Mateo) - Taiwanese

• Sumika (Los Altos) - Excellent yakitori in Los Altos

• Ad Hoc (Yountville) - TK’s casual restaurant that serves fantastic buttermilk fried chicken. Up in Yountville. Worth a visit if you’re up in Napa

Coffee / Cafe

San Francisco

These are places that either have good coffee or are good for chilling in (or both)

• The Interval At Long Now - cool space, near Marina, also a bar with yummy drinks

• Red Door Coffee - great coffee spot to meet someone, located inside art gallery!

• The Mill - beautiful space to hangout in and get coffee. They’re famous for the fancy toasts.

• Trouble Coffee - good coffee, good toast

Desserts

San Francisco

• Ice Cream - Smitten (many locations, get the Tcho 60% choco), Bi-rite (2 locations), Mr & Mrs Miscellaneous, Humphry Solocombe (‘Secret Breakfast’ flavor - bourbon and corn flakes)

• Kowloon Tong - HK style dessert cafe

Bars

Most of these are cocktail bars. Some are restaurants with really good bars.

San Francisco

• The Interval At Long Now - Cool space, near Marina, also a coffee shop

• Wilson & Wilson or Bourbon & Branch - good cocktail bars. W&W is the “speakeasy” inside B&B. Get reservations.

• Third Rail - out of the way in the Dogpatch district, but delicious cocktails and jerky pairings!

• True Laurel - from Lazy Bear group. Great drinks. Fried mushroom dish is bueno.

• Mister Jiu’s - good drinks. Skip the overpriced food.

• The Progress - good drinks. Skip the overpriced food.

Fancy ($100+ per person)

San Francisco

• Benu - Asian (mainly Korean) French.

• Kokkari - Greek. So delicious. Get the lamb chops and grilled fish.

• Californios - modern fancy Mexican. 2 Michelin stars. It’s just really delicious and a much better experience than all the other 2 + 3 stars I’ve been to. Great for special occasion.

• Fancy Omakase Sushi - Sasaki (more traditional), Kusakabe (less traditional), Wako (more traditional), Hinata (less traditional), Ju-ni (less traditional), Robin (less traditional), Sushi Shin in RWC

  • I don’t super recommend eating (paying for) omakase in SF, but these are delicious if you want to. Just not terribly great bang for buck versus Japan or even New York

  • I don’t recommend Kinjo anymore. Changed chefs, blah. However, a sushi chef recently encouraged me to try it again.

  • I don’t recommend Hashiri. Very pricey for not amazing sushi.

  • Have heard good things about Ijji, but have not tried myself yet.

• In Situ - Restaurant inside SFMoMA. Really interesting concept. Presents famous dishes from all over the world.

East Bay

• Fancy Omakase Sushi - Utzutzu (Alameda)

• CDP - the little sister “bar lounge” of 2 Michelin Star Commis. Highly recommend getting the house levain bread with chicken skin butter, and the cured egg yolk and allium puree. The latter is a Commis signature and super good with the warm bread. CDP also has great cocktails

  • Honestly, skip Commis.