Food and Cooking

Go to Burlingame and Eat a Lion

A new item on the menu at a Bay Area restaurant has pitted foodies against animal activists. Mokutanya Yakitori Restaurant in Burlingame is now serving lion's meat, which is reportedly as tough as the animal itself. The restaurant, which is known for its exotic meats, including peacock and swan, r ... More >>

Peninsula Dining Update: New Coastal Restaurants, a Hofbrau, and Pizza in Palo Alto

Just in time for the summer beach season, a few new destinations have opened up along the coast. In Pacifica, the 140-seat Puerto 27 is now open inside the Pacifica Beach Hotel. The Peruvian-style cuisine comes courtesy of Jose Calvo-Perez, most recently of Pasion in San Francisco's Sunset District. ... More >>

Pacific Puffs: The Sweet Side of Food Trucks

Wine Kitchen: Small Plates and Gentrification on Divisadero

Recent Openers

Pop-up Report: Rice Paper Scissors at Mojo Bicycle Cafe

The pop-up is the latest in a long tradition of trends which attempt to subvert the tropes of the restaurant system. Following in the footsteps of revolutionaries like gourmet food trucks and frozen dinners, the goal is to provide restaurant-worthy dishes outside the standard rubric of the restauran ... More >>

Sydney Town Tavern Sticks to Basics Done Well in the FiDi

Just around the corner from the Transamerica Pyramid comes the new Sydney Town Tavern, a reference to Barbary Coast days when exiles from Australian penal colonies populated San Francisco. It's hardly a wretched hive of scum and villainy in there, though. In fact, it's a fairly ordinary sports bar ... More >>

Art and Food Join Forces at SFMOMA's Collaboration With Hip S.F. Restaurants

SFMOMA may be closing for renovations on June 2, but the it's not slacking on its well-established relationship between food and art in the meantime. In honor of the closing of the exhibit Ben Kinmont: Prospectus, the museum is partnering with restaurants like State Bird Provisions, Rich Table, Bar ... More >>

Bottle Rock: Napa Festival's Attempt To Combine Food, Wine, and Music Falls Short

It seems like a good idea on paper: Throw a music festival in wine country where guests can go wine-tasting and sample some of the region's best restaurants in between musical acts. That was the focus of Bottle Rock, a new festival thrown in a park in downtown Napa that combines stadium-filling rock ... More >>

Hard Water: Charles Phan's Exciting Expansion Into Southern Food

Recent Openers

State Bird and Other Bay Area Greats Win James Beard Foundation Awards

When Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza, the couple behind San Francisco's popular State Bird Provisions, entered the packed media room at last night's James Beard Foundation Awards at Lincoln Center in New York, they were quickly devoured by a hungry press corps like some tiny little quail. And wit ... More >>

Food Truck Bite of the Week: Floating on a Peanut Butter Cream Puff at Pacific Puffs

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks. The Truck: Pacific Puffs The Cuisine: Cream puffs in seasonal and classic flavors Specialty Items: Mini and regular sized cream puffs Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a tot ... More >>

New Tumblr Reviews Restaurant Bathrooms Along With Food

In the hypersaturated world of Bay Area food blogs and restaurant reviews, it can be hard to find a new angle. But some enterprising local has started a new type of restaurant review Tumblr, Table and Throne, which reviews restaurant bathrooms as well as the restaurants themselves, thus combining ... More >>

Health Check: Are More S.F. Restaurants Grand Opening or Grand Closing?

The San Francisco restaurant scene is constantly plagued with closures. Since the beginning of the year, we've lost solid places such as Masa's, Tommy Toy's, Solstice, Shanghai, Kan Zaman, and Wo Hing General Store. Luckily, S.F. is also blessed with a seemingly endless run of restaurant openings. H ... More >>

Equator and Ma'velous Team Up for Glimpse at Best Coffee in America

Ma'velous, that glimmering trove of coffees and gorgeous gizmos by Civic Center, is bringing in an extra special bounty to its already very special menu. But if you blink, you'll miss it. The goods? Granja La Esperanza Geisha, a lot of a rare and celebrated varietal roasted by Caitlin McCarthy-Garci ... More >>

Padrecito: Mexican Cuisine Gets a Makeover in Cole Valley

Recent Openers

Food Truck Bite of the Week: Finding Home with Laksa at Azalina's Malaysian

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks. The Truck: Azalina's Malaysian The Cuisine: Mamak stall cuisine, a blend of Indian, Malay, and Chinese cuisine Specialty Items: Fritters, curries, buns Worth the Wait in Line? At peak ... More >>

Matchmaking At The 2013 Oyster Wine Competition

Every year I look forward to judging the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition put on by Taylor Shellfish Farms and oyster expert Jon Rowley. The setup is simple: through an extensive selection process, Rowley and a team of preliminary judges comb through 124 California, Oregon, and Washington wines ... More >>

Drink of the Week: Hunting with the Woodsman at Bloodhound

When Bloodhound opened in 2008 (making it 36 in dog years), that stretch of Folsom was a rather lonely one with a few outlier clubs and leather shops. The bar's success and longevity is certainly due in part to the bartending skills that owner Dylan O'Brien honed over the years, but also because it ... More >>

First Impressions At Tribune Tavern

When the Tribune Tavern opened two weeks ago in Oakland, I was excited. Firstly, it's a tavern, under a newspaper. A place for wirey and haggard journalists, gatekeepers to the misery of the world, to roll down their sleeves and commune. Wingback chairs, scotch, Jimmy Stewart (maybe?). Halfway throu ... More >>

Recent Openers

American Bao Bar: Pop-Up Combines Asian and Southern Cuisines

Cocktail Culture: Evolving Beyond Beards and Suspenders Into Something Weirder Still

Top 10 Breakfast Sandwiches in San Francisco

If you want to be technical about it, any sandwich consumed first thing in the morning is a "breakfast sandwich," but we know what you're really after as you roll groggily out of bed: oozing, melted cheese, fluffy scrambled or fried eggs, optional (but not really) meat of choice, all encased by swee ... More >>

Small Touches Go Far at Waraku

Last summer, Japanese restaurant Men Oh Tokushima Ramen opened its second American location on Geary Street in San Francisco, followed by a hot pot spot called Shabuway. Its new Japantown sister spot Waraku provides similar quality and value. Located in the former Bushi-Tei restaurant space (Bushi T ... More >>

Recent Openers

Saint Frank: Bringing the Story of Coffee to Russian Hill

Tax Relief: The Best Tax Day Deals Around Town

Ugh, taxes. Amirite? The only silver lining to tax day being just around the corner -- besides the fact that it will be over for another year, of course -- is that restaurants and bars begin to offer tax season discounts and sometimes freebies in commiseration. The list isn't super-long right now, b ... More >>

Recent Openers

Cult Classics: Vegetarian Restaurants With a Religious Philosophy

Bouncer Conducts Field Research at Soma Restaurant & Bar

Saint Frank to Bring Story of Coffee to Russian Hill

The past two years have proven San Francisco to be fairly fertile ground for craft coffee. Armfuls of small roasters and "Third Wave" cafés are popping open monthly, and their missions are clear: to teach us to love coffee as we love wine -- to care about where it comes from and the prolific subtle ... More >>

Check Out a Fresh Pasta Pop-Up Shop This Saturday

Mattarello, a local artisan pasta company named for the rolling pin that Italians use to roll pasta, will be holding a pasta shop pop-up this Saturday, April 6 at Biondivino from 3-6 p.m. The menu will include nests of fresh pasta like tagliatelle, pappardelle, whole-wheat fettuccine, parsley-garlic ... More >>

Recent Openers

Charles Chocolates: A Triumphant Return

Kronnerburger: Succumbing to the Cult of the Burger

Coffee Culture Will Combine Fro-Yo and Espresso in the FiDi

If you've been part of the daily midday mass exodus to the Curry Up Now truck in the FiDi, you've probably passed a mysterious and jazzy storefront on Bush Street with the name "Coffee Cultures" stamped across the front window. The upcoming café is a new venture from Jason Paul, former co-owner o ... More >>

Pop-Up Planner: The Best Temporary Restaurants, March 29-April 5

Waffles & Whiskey Happy Hour When: Fri., March 29, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Where: Rye Cost: Waffles $5; cocktail $8 The rundown: Roving wafflemaker Chrissy's Waffles is now doing a "Waffles & Whiskey Happy Hour" every Friday night at Rye. This Friday will pair a bacon doughnut waffle with a Crimp's Buck cock ... More >>

Recent Openers

Stock in Trade: Pork-Mad in the Marina

Food Truck Bite of the Week: The Wise Bowl and the Fool

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks. The Truck: Hapa Ramen and Wise Sons Deli The Cuisine: Food Truck Mash-up Specialty Items: Seasonally influenced ramen (Hapa Ramen) and Jewish deli classics (Wise Sons Deli) Worth the ... More >>

Passover Dinners Not To Pass Over

For eight days every spring, Passover recalls the exodus of Jews from Egypt to freedom, while royally screwing over food choices of modern-day Jews and relegating their diets to flattened pieces of cardboard-tasting matzoh. Given the bevy of pastries, hipster-toasts and other tempting leavened goodi ... More >>

The Evolution of Mission Chinese Food's New York Counterpart

Not that we're a total Mission Chinese Food groupie or anything, but when the restaurant opened a second restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last May, we were literally the first customer through the door. It opened with about 80% of the same menu items as what can be found in San Francis ... More >>

S.F. Resident Wins National Manischewitz Cooking Competition

It ain't the legendary Pillsbury Bake-Off, but San Francisco resident Josie Shapiro won the country's only kosher cooking competition, the Manischewitz Cook-Off Contest, which took place today in Manischewitz HQ in New Jersey. The winning recipe? "Faux pho," a soup made in under an hour with Manisch ... More >>

Cana: Cuban Food in the Mission Gets Buried Under Basic Mistakes

Chicken Soup's Good For the Soul at Shorty Goldstein's

A new deli in the Financial District is offering classic comfort food like pastrami sandwiches and chicken soup updated with local, seasonal ingredients, as per usual in S.F. The tagline at Shorty Goldstein's is "cure, brine, smoke, pickle," which refers to all the things that Michael Siegel and his ... More >>

City Attorney Dennis Herrera Calls for Stricter Federal Regulations on Energy Drinks

There is less waiting these days. Cross the country in six hours. Exchange correspondence within seconds. Buy the new Jordan's with a click from the couch. The few stretches of waiting -- 20 seconds on the elevator, three minutes at the taco truck, an hour at the DMV -- turn into stretches, via sm ... More >>

Scavenger Hunt and $3 Cookbooks at the Library's Big Book Sale

Looking for some vintage James Beard cookbooks or to read and learn the rules of hospitality from restaurant guru Danny Meyer? Consider stocking up on cookbooks at the upcoming 49th Annual Big Book Sale, which benefits San Francisco's public libraries and is held at the Festival Pavilion of Fort Mas ... More >>