Better Than AI: My Top 5 SF Tasting Menus
In shambolic decline, go out with a bang. I'm running it large and bold in the Paris of the West to remind the goose steppers San Francisco still rules.
I sure don’t want to be glib.
Food writer and major homie Jaya Saxena caught the mood well on one of the last decent platforms, Bluesky: “This sucks!! This all fucking sucks so bad!! I promise I'm doing my little things about it but this sucks!!!!!!!”
Absolutely the vibe. Even I was surprised by Musk’s Sieg Heil — on Martin Luther King Jr. Day no less. The Anti Defamation League minded their usual BS, working hard for Zionists far and wide. The old school Nazi salute may not be anti-Semitic, but pro-Palestinian chants remain “hateful.” Good times!
It’s my second Trump inauguration spent overseas. I tuned most of it out. For the last ten Martin Luther King Jr. Days, I’ve baked a cake.
Some years I go for a Mississippi Mud Cake, a Bicchieri family classic. Last year I tried the Korean Vegan’s sweet potato cake, moist and lovely. I still have Mario Batali’s “Big American Cookbook" which I realize is borderline a hate crime, but it was one of the few cookbooks my Grandma Floy bought me; Unfortunately, Batali is sort of a right-leaning Boomer hero for rural Washingtonians, given his Seattle roots. His St. Louis-style Ooey Gooey Butter Cake was a hit a few MLKJ Days back.
This year, in my crappy kitchen in an Irish rental, I baked a store-bought brownie mix. I stuck too-large candles in the traybake. As reports of infamy from our home country sailed through the Internet, my wife and I blew out the tiny flames.
My point is I’m not changing my political convictions and I’m staying the same damn course. If you’re having a crisis of confidence, buck up. Get back in the saddle. And, like many Angelenos are doing for their city’s restaurants, now’s a great time to pitch in. So the oligarchs’ national win was fueled by woke politics, the downfall of California, and failure cities like San Francisco’s demise? I plan to keep reminding them just how wrong that thinking really is, having cake and eating it, too.
Go shell out for the restaurants holding it down in a city constantly propped up as an example of how much a city can suck. Don’t worry about the money; Trump’s going to be bringing those costs down real soon thanks to an invention he’s been cooking up: tariffs!
Here are five of my favorite tasting menus in San Francisco. There’s a lot to say about tasting menus, and how great they are across the greater Bay. I wrote a piece re: the state of the city’s fine dining game. And, since I’ve actually eaten at these places, you can rest assured these tips come to you better than AI.
Mijoté
Eating at Mijoté is like stepping into a scene of, yes I’m going to say it, Parts Unknown. I say that because while it’s brutally cliche to reference the show it does represent a kind of dining experience many hope against hope for: slick and elevated, but simultaneously down to earth and homey, as though you, too, know the best chef in an unnameable Italian mountain town who happens to take you in for cena.
The restaurant’s lamb loin was rich and fatty. I go crazy for a sharp, indulgent cheese. And don’t get me started on a clever use of persimmon. The main reason to head here is likely how doable it is for a group to afford a big night out at this Mission District restaurant: it’ll cost $82 per person for a four-course fixed dinner menu. And securing a table is not impossible, unlike some of this spot’s competition.
3rd Cousin
Greg Lutes is a humble chef. He’s funny, hard-working. He invented his signature uni crème brûlée to try and impress a girlfriend of yore. At the top of Bernal Heights lies one of the city’s least pretentious fine dining experiences, cemented in the scene in 2021 when the Michelin Guide listed it as a ‘New Discovery’ restaurant.
I was charmed from start to finish. The uni crème brûlée is indeed as good as the restaurant would have you think; My wife described it as “ocean butter.” I fell in love with the octopus, recommending it to a reader who asked while I was at Eater SF. No dish or part of the service was out of sort, and moreover the environment and approach was unfussy; One dessert was a kind of granola panacotta that was creamy, crunchy, familiar, yet fancy. Not only are dietary concerns accommodated smartly, the price point is recession-friendly. The eight-course menu costs $165.
Bodega
I can’t overstate how dangerous it is to sleep on the Tenderloin’s restaurant game. Azalina’s is a banger, Black Cat is maybe the best live music venue in the city, and of course there’s Himalayan Pizza and Momo (sort of explains itself). On the tasting cours front, though, I can’t hide my huge love for Eddy Street’s Bodega. The multi-generational Vietnamese restaurant is just stupid good.
Every time I order oysters here what arrives is better than the time before, sometimes splashed with yuzu and others with salmon roe. The bun cha is a meaty hit of delight. The truffle crab fried rice is as mighty an entrant to the upscale renditions that went viral thanks to chef Robert Lam at Lily, crunchy and big-time rich. It’s $90 a pop, and at least two in your group to participate.
Lazy Bear
Yes, I did go for two Mission District restaurants. Not very geo-friendly of me! But this one is sort of the spiritual opposite of the laid-back Mijoté. If that little spot is the upscale neighborhood restaurant you’ve always hoped would open on your block, Lazy Bear is the global destination, era-defining restaurant where you’re just lucky enough to share the same historical epoch.
I do love hyperbole. The two Michelin star-holding restaurant is, basically, that good, though. Service here is triumphant, attentive and warm and funny. The drinks program rocks, including worth-ordering nonalcoholic drinks. And I’ve waxed plenty on the lamb chop. There’s been a big remodel since I visited. It’s a face-punching $295 to eat here. But, even at that price, good luck getting a ticket.
Lord Stanley
I admit this pick is a little bit of a cop out. The menu here for a number of the meals I’ve had were a part of rotating chef takeovers, known as Turntable by Lord Stanley. A lot of good chefs and food came through this Russian Hill corner spot in that time. Mari Vega’s pre-colonial Mesoamerican food killed me, a particular chocolate mousse lingering with me years later.
Chef de cuisine Nathan Matkowsky is at the helm now a “French cuisine with Asian influences” project up and running. Headed into 2025, the 10-course tasting menu runs $100.
Moreover, this one slid into the five as it was, more or less, the first fine dining restaurant I ever ate at. My wife’s parents took me here for my mother-in-law’s birthday in 2020, right before the pandemic put the world to bed. I was truly dumbstruck by the service and ambiane alone; The ceilings are so high, the lighting so low, cars busying the road outside like San Francisco really is a city, one of the greats.
Not even all the other spots I would also recommend: Dalida, Besharam (already covered in Indian restos!), shockingly legit hotel restaurant La Societe, Osito, thunderous newcomer Four Kings, wherever Hadeem sets up shop and we’re lucky enough to eat that glorious grub, Deluxe Queer’s Ghibli-esque breakfast porridge, Nisei’s ridiculous sourdough mochi, and frankly way more.
The idea was to be brief *shrugs*