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Restaurants Overview

Since the city's earliest days, food lovers have flocked to San Francisco -- a place where diversity rules and trends are set. The gold rush of 1849 brought a flood of immigrants from all over the world, and they quickly introduced their national tables to their new neighbors. Today San Francisco remains a vital culinary crossroads, with nearly every ethnic cuisine represented -- from Afghan to Indian to Vietnamese. And although locals have long headed to the Mission District for Latin food, to Chinatown and the Richmond District for Asian food, and to North Beach for Italian food, they also know that every part of the city offers dining experiences beyond the neighborhood tradition.

This historical diversity has helped to create a city of adventurous diners and has kept chefs here busy inventing fare to satisfy their demanding clientele. The now-famous California cuisine, an ephemeral term that generally implies full-flavored dishes consisting of fresh, usually organic produce and meats and drawing inspiration from both European and Asian cookery, is a hallmark of that drive. Developed in the early 1970s at the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant, across the bay in Berkeley, this classic local cooking style today is featured in dozens of San Francisco restaurants, each always striving to be a little different from the competition down the street, and usually succeeding.

A bevy of nationally celebrated, highly innovative chefs, including Judy Rodgers, Traci Des Jardins, Gary Danko, and Mark Franz, call San Francisco home. They are all serious trendsetters, but in the end it's the local diners who decide whether a trend succeeds or not. Early this decade, for example, a couple of restaurants switched to small-plate menus, drawing on the tradition of Spanish tapas. In no time, these establishments became wildly popular, and now a slew of Italian, French, Asian, Latin, California-cuisine, and, of course, Spanish restaurants are satisfying the hunger for little bites of lots of tastes at a single meal.

Not every trend is new. In the 1970s the city was known for its French restaurants, including the high-profile Le Trianon, opened by René Verdon, former chef to the Kennedy White House. Eventually French food fell out of fashion as other culinary waves, such as rustic Italian, pan-Mediterranean, and fusion cuisine (the introduction of Asian ingredients in Western kitchens), washed over the city. But French food has come roaring back into style, with bistros and brasseries popping up everywhere from the Financial District to Pacific Heights and Potrero Hill.

Fortunately, some trends don't fade. San Francisco is the birthplace of sourdough bread, and you find pungent, chewy loaves of it everywhere, particularly along Fisherman's Wharf. You also find moderately priced California wines just about everywhere -- thanks to the proximity of the Napa and Sonoma valleys, to the north. Look, too, for the excellent Anchor Steam beer, an old city label that nearly disappeared in the 1960s only to be resuscitated and prosper. Many credit its success, built on traditional brewing techniques, with helping to launch the revival of microbrewing in the United States.

Selecting some 125 recommended restaurants is a next-to-impossible task. Several restaurants represent each popular style of dining in various price ranges. In most cases, the restaurants were chosen because of the superiority of the food but in some instances because of the view or ambience. The areas of town most frequented by visitors have received the greatest attention. This has meant leaving out some great places in the more distant corners of the city. The outlying restaurants that are recommended were chosen because they offer an experience not available elsewhere.