Californian restaurants in San Francisco
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Park Chow
Cozy up by the fireplace downstairs or the patio heat lamps upstairs, and shake that fog-belt chill with reliable, California comfort food like mild curry Smiling Noodles, stalwart spaghetti with meatballs, and caramel gingerbread with pumpkin ice cream. This is one of the most kid-friendly and pet-positive restaurants in the city, with booster seats and water bowls by the door.
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Boulevard
The quake-surviving, 1889 belle epoque Audiffred Building is a fitting locale for Boulevard, which remains one of San Francisco's most solidly reliable and effortlessly graceful restaurants. Chef Nancy Oakes has a light, easy touch with classics like juicy pork chops, finesses Dungeness crab salad with fresh basil, watermelon and yogurt, and ends East–West coastal rivalries with Maine lobster stuffed inside California squid.
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Aqua
Prix-fixe dinners here are major FiDi investments, but the $36 three-course business lunch delivers tiny, jewel-like dishes so fresh and delicately handled, you can almost taste the sun in a cherry-tomato sorbet and stormy seas in the geoduck clam ceviche. Trust your savvy server to recommend wine pairings and provide spot-on assessments of a dish, including where that tomato or clam comes from (most ingredients are sustainably sourced) and how it was prepared. Aqua has been justly famed as one of the city’s finest for years now – this is where star chefs Traci Des Jardins and Michael Mina got their starts, among others – so be sure to book well ahead if you’re planning a…
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Canteen
The Mini Cooper of San Francisco restaurants, Canteen packs maximum flair into minimal space. Chef Dennis Leary (of Rubicon fame) jumped off the celebrity-chef-in-Vegas track to preside over the kitchen solo and cook whatever he damn well pleases on any given day, which if you're lucky might include smoked duck with Treviso raddichio and roast figs, and lamb with a pomegranate reduction. There are only three seatings a night at 6, 7:30, and 9.
Brunches may mean an hour wait, but it's hard to complain with your mouth full and toes curled in delight. Fingers crossed it's a prix fixe night, where the chef pulls out all the stops for around US$50. They can't accommodate…
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Range
Inspired American dining is alive and well at Range. Lowly pork shoulder becomes an eye-opener rubbed with coffee and served with bafflingly smooth grits, and wild nettle pasta stuffed with local goat cheese is a study in decadence. Celebrated pastry chef Michele Polzine's impeccable dessert soufflés will leave you weak in the knees, but although the beer fridge is a repurposed medical cabinet ominously emblazoned with the words 'Blood Bank,' Range won't actually cost you an arm or a leg.
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Bar Bambino
Rustic Italian fare at communal tables, right off the freeway. The olive-oil tasting is a bit much at $3 to $5 an ounce, but otherwise there’s no denying the appeal of this Southern Italian menu highlighting Californian produce: pasta with Mission figs and pancetta, fresh squash blossoms stuffed with sheep’s milk ricotta, and pine-nut-studded eggplant polpette (meat balls), each for under $15, plus a well-priced, adventurous Italian wine list.
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Café Myth
Office jockeys risk the boss' ire to wait in line for Myth's California-style classics, including sushi-grade ahi tuna salad, butternut squash soup with duck confit, and chicken pot pie bursting with organic vegetables. Ditch work early to share a leisurely dinner of large and small plates, and be prepared to a fight over the last bite of seared duck with sprightly orange, earthy shitake mushroom and pistachios, and mellow port wine reduction.
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Eos Restaurant & Wine Bar
A classic overachiever, Eos isn't content to have appreciative crowds licking the last of its classic shitake mushroom dumplings, chorizo sausage mussel small plates, and gooey cardamom chocolate cake. Instead it plies you with eclectic wine flights until you're proclaiming its genius to everyone who'll listen. Since tables are close, that could be everyone in the restaurant - good thing everyone's in a similar state.
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Bar Jules
Small, local and succulent is the credo at this corridor of a neighborhood bistro. The short daily menu thinks big with flavor-rich, sustainably minded offerings like local duck breast with cherries, almonds and arugula, a local wine selection and the dark, sinister 'chocolate nemesis.' Even with reservations, waits are a given – but so is simple, tasty food.
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Spruce
VIP all the way, with Baccarat crystal chandeliers, tawny leather chairs and your choice of 1000 wines. Ladies who lunch dispense with polite conversation, tearing into grass-fed burgers on house-baked English muffins loaded with pickled onions, zucchini grown on the restaurant's own organic farm and an optional slab of foie gras. Want fries with that? Oh yes you do: Spruce's are cooked in duck fat.
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Salt House
For a business lunch that feels more like a spa getaway, take your choice of light fare such as duck confit or yellowfin tuna with beets. Forget the ice tea, and unwind with wine by the glass and refreshing ginger juleps instead. Service is leisurely, so order that carrot cake with cream-cheese ice cream now.
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Foreign Cinema
Reliably tasty dishes like cocoa-rubbed bavette steak and five-spice quail are the main attractions, but Luis Buñuel and François Truffaut provide an entertaining backdrop with movies screened in the courtyard, and subtitles you can follow when the conversation lags. For the red-carpet treatment, there's valet parking ($12) and a well-stocked oyster bar.
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Gary Danko
Smoked-glass windows prevent passersby from tripping over their tongues at the sight of exquisite roasted lobster with trumpet mushrooms, blushing duck breast with rhubarb compote, trios of crème brûlée and the lavish cheese cart. Take your server's seasonal recommendations of three to five courses and prepare to be impressed. Gary Danko has won multiple James Beard Awards for providing impeccable dining experiences, from inventive salad courses like oysters with caviar and lettuce cream to the casually charming server who hands you tiny chocolate cakes as a parting gift. Reservations essential.
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Rose's Café
Follow your salads and housemade soups with rich organic polenta with gorgonzola and thyme, or a simple grass-fed beef burger, then linger over espresso or tea. Shop if you must, but return to this sunny corner cafe from 4pm to 6pm for half-price wine by the glass. Great breakfasts, too.
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Uva Enoteca
Boys with shags and girls with bangs discover the joys of Bardolino and Barbera by the tasting glass, served with inventive small plates of local veggies, cheese and charcuterie boards by a sassy staff of tattooed Lower Haight hotties.
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Mission Beach Cafe
Brunch gets an upgrade to first class with farm-fresh organic ingredients: pancakes come with strawberries and bourbon syrup, while huevos rancheros (ranch-style eggs) are served with heritage beans and sustainably raised pulled pork. The crowning glory is the veggie eggs Benedict with wild mushrooms, caramelized onions and truffle sauce, loaded onto an English muffin made by the in-house pastry chef.
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Fish & Farm
Ecocomfort food showcases organic produce, sustainable seafood and humanely raised meats, all sourced within 100 miles - plus cocktails blended with seasonal, organic fruit.
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Frances
Chef/owner Melissa Perello earned a Michelin star for fine dining, then ditched downtown to start this market-inspired neighborhood bistro. Daily menus showcase bright, seasonal flavors and luxurious textures: cloudlike sheep's milk ricotta gnocchi with crunchy breadcrumbs and broccolini, grilled calamari with preserved Meyer lemon, and artisan wine served by the ounce, directly from Wine Country.
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Commonwealth
California's most imaginative farm-to-table dining isn't in some quaint barn, but the converted cinderblock Mission dive where chef Jason Fox serves crispy hen with toybox carrots cooked in hay (yes, hay), and sea urchin floating on a bed of farm egg and organic asparagus that looks like a tide pool and tastes like a dream. Savor the $65 prix-fixe knowing $10 is donated to charity.
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Commonwealth
California's most imaginative farm-to-table dining isn't in some quaint barn, but the converted cinderblock Mission dive where chef Jason Fox serves crispy hen with toybox carrots cooked in hay (yes, hay), and sea urchin floating on a bed of farm egg and organic asparagus that looks like a tide pool and tastes like a dream. Savor the $65 prix-fixe knowing $10 is donated to charity.
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Coi
Chef Daniel Patterson's wild tasting menu featuring foraged morels, wildflowers and Pacific seafood is like licking the California coastline. Black and green noodles are made from clams and Pacific seaweed, and purple ice-plant petals are strewn atop Sonoma duck's tongue, wild-caught abalone and just-picked arugula. Only-in-California flavors and intriguing wine pairings ($95; pours generous enough for two to share) will keep you California dreaming for a while afterwards.
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Jardinière
Her formidable reputation as Iron Chef, Top Chef Master and James Beard Award winner precedes her, but star chef Traci Des Jardins is better known at her namesake restaurant Jardinière as a champion of sustainable, salacious California cuisine. She has a way with California's organic vegetables, free-range meats and sustainably caught seafood that's probably illegal in other states, lavishing braised oxtail ravioli with summer truffles and stuffing crispy pork belly with salami and fig. Go Mondays, when $45 scores three decadent courses with wine pairings.
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