CITY GUIDES | CALIFORNIA

The Best Restaurants in San Francisco, Fog or Shine

Ambitious tasting menus, neighborhood institutions, and a new gem where Thailand meets California.

By Mei Chen
Updated Aug. 24, 2026

Dalida

AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.

San Francisco has always moved in cycles, from gold rushes to dot-com booms to the latest tech-fueled reinvention. I grew up just outside the city and have lived here several times as an adult, long enough to watch neighborhoods empty out, fill back up, and become expensive in entirely new ways. Through it all, San Francisco’s food scene has remained remarkably consistent: restless, inventive, and fed by cooks from nearly everywhere. These are the best restaurants in San Francisco right now.

7 Adams

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7 Adams is what happens when two chefs walk away from a Michelin star and build something better—and then win another star in the process. David and Serena Chow Fisher left Marlena and opened this snug, modern spot on Sutter Street, where their affordably priced $87 five-course tasting menu feels like a masterclass in restraint and precision. Expect dishes like kabocha squash caramelle with chanterelles, black cod with sunchoke confit, and a milk bread roll so good it should come with a warning label. They earned a Michelin star in 2024, then celebrated with In-N-Out, which tells you everything you need to know.

Best for: A Michelin-starred tasting menu under $100

Benu

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First opened in 2010, Corey Lee’s three-star Michelin spot feels like what would happen if NASA ran a dim sum restaurant: perfect soup dumplings, lobster coral custard, and, pictured above, fresh egg noodles and clams—edible architecture. Bring a second mortgage and a willingness to cry at a dumpling.

Best for: Korean-inflected fine dining at its most precise

Bon Délire

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You might miss Bon Délire if you blink—it’s tucked into a weird little waterfront spot that feels one broken lease away from becoming a vape shop. But Vernon Morales is cooking French bistro food like he’s got something to prove: chicken croquettes that taste like they were invented by wizards, a croque madame that could make you write poetry. It’s scrappy, sly, and way better than it has any right to be.

Best for: French bistro cooking along the Embarcadero

Causwells

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Causwells is the kind of place that makes you reconsider your stance on the Marina. Chef Adam Rosenblum's Americana burger is like a refined In-N-Out Double-Double, with char-grilled patties, melted cheese, and house-made pickles. The restaurant's revamped interior and inventive cocktails, like the Girl Scout cookie-inspired drinks, add to its charm.

Best for: One of San Francisco’s essential burgers

Copra

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South Indian food, aggressively pretty interior, and a chutney flight that you must start with. The Thattukada fried chicken is what you order if you want to do this right. From Srijith Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar, Copra is a restaurant designed for people who think dinner should also double as content, and to be fair, it earns the camera time.

Best for: South Indian cooking in a spectacular setting

Dalida

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Dalida could easily coast on location alone—it’s right by the Palace of Fine Arts—but instead it chooses violence in the best way. Chefs Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz drop Eastern Mediterranean feasts so layered and lush you’ll forget your own name. It’s one of those places where every bite feels both inevitable and completely surprising, like a great plot twist you should’ve seen coming.

Best for: Eastern Mediterranean feasts in the Presidio

Elena’s Mexican Restaurant

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Every time I go to Elena’s, I leave questioning my life choices for not living closer to West Portal. Elena and John Duggan’s mole enchiladas land with the gravity of a family secret, and the carnitas might actually cure minor illnesses. You’ll wait for a table because everyone else figured this out too, but it's a fair trade for a little happiness.

Best for: Family recipes and mole enchiladas in West Portal

Four Kings

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Four Kings is what happens when two chefs ditch the playbook and start remixing Cantonese-American classics with no supervision. Franky Ho and Michael Long’s char siu shows up lacquered like a sports car, and the soy sauce chicken is basically emotional warfare. They were named one of Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurants of 2024, but you probably knew that already from the line outside.

Best for: Cantonese cooking with a rebellious streak

Kiln

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Kiln feels like the sort of place that would rather torch its own tables than serve you a boring plate of pasta. Chef John Wesley built a Michelin-starred tasting menu out of feral ingredients—venison tallow, beef tendon, dishes that sound like dares but end up heartbreakingly good. It’s tiny, dark, a little haunted-looking, and absolutely worth the minor identity crisis it’ll give you. And while it’s still relatively new, Kiln’s $285 tasting menu begins with meticulously built dishes and continues unabated through about 20 courses that prove a simple truth: Kiln is San Francisco’s best restaurant.

Best for: An inventive tasting menu that embraces the unexpected

Omakase

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At Omakase, after they hand you 12 pieces of sushi, they also deliver a bill roughly equivalent to your first car—and yet it all seems entirely perfect. Chef Jackson Yu specializes in Edomae-style fish flown in daily from Japan, each piece somehow humbler and more devastating than the last. You’ll swear you’re being ripped off until the first bite hits and you forget how capitalism works.

Best for: An intimate Edomae sushi splurge

Prik Hom

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Prik Hom opened quietly in 2023 and almost instantly exploded, earning a spot on a whole lot of best restaurant list. Siblings Tanya and Jim Suwanpanya serve Northern Thai dishes that are fierce, complicated, and worth the sweat. You’ll want the sai ua sausage platter, and yes, you’ll be too full to move afterward.

Best for: Fiery Northern Thai cooking

Restaurant Naides

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Chef Patrick Gabon named Restaurant Naides for his mother, then built a Michelin-starred tasting menu around the Filipino flavors of his childhood. His pandesal arrives with chicken liver pâté, chicken sisig, and atchara, while sinigang pairs barbecued abalone with tamarind-bright broth. Gabon’s partner, Celine Wuu, runs the dining room and an unusually compelling nonalcoholic pairing program, with fermented fruit, teas, and juices that hold their own beside all that salt, sourness, and funk.

Best for: Filipino fine dining with a remarkable nonalcoholic pairing

Routier

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Routier is what happens when an actual Frenchman (Mathieu Rondeau) and two smart Americans decide to make a neighborhood restaurant that cooks circles around everyone else. It’s technically a brasserie, but good luck fitting it into any category after you try the beef cheek bourguignon or the duck liver mousse. One of the few places where sitting at the bar alone with a bottle of wine feels like a flex, not a tragedy.

Best for: French comfort food at the neighborhood bar

Saam

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Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn chose San Francisco for his first restaurant outside Asia after turning Bangkok’s Le Du and Nusara into two of the world’s most celebrated Thai restaurants. At Saam, he works with Tee Atthapon and Ty Choosuwan on an à la carte menu that travels through Thailand without losing sight of California: peach som tum, dry khao soi noodles, Thai-Javanese lamb curry, and salt-crusted branzino. The cooking lands spicy, sour, and salty, which also explains the name—saam means three in Thai.

Best for: Family-style Thai cooking with Bangkok credentials

Verjus

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Verjus is that rare natural wine bar that doesn’t seem hellbent on punishing you. The food’s sharp (think rabbit pâté and anchovy toasts), the wine list could start fights, and the crowd looks like the casting call for a moody indie movie. It’s technically a bar, but you’ll end up eating three meals by accident.

Best for: Natural wine with serious French cooking