The Bay Area Restaurants We Loved in 2025
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It’s that most wonderful time of year where Team Resy and Tock have scrolled through our respective camera rolls to pin down the meals that’ve stood out to us the most. It’s never easy to be pick favorites, but our 2025 picks have proven yet again what we know and hold dear to our hearts: Restaurants are our homes away from home, acting as the perfect backdrop for all of life’s moments, both big and small.
From the places where we’ve felt like regulars to the restaurants that hosted our catch-ups with friends, birthdays, and everything in between, here are Team Resy and Tock’s favorite restaurant meals of 2025.
It’s a gift to the East Bay…
Every meal I’ve had at Sirene this year has been memorable: the Chartreuse slushies (courtesy of their sister restaurant in San Francisco, The Morris), poached shrimp, ice-cold crudités, the best fish and chips. Whether we’ve been seated on the cozy heated patio or the glowy, buzzy dining room, the service is consistently warm and dialed in. Don’t miss their daytime coffee service or daily lunch menus, either.
— Kimia Azimi, Implementation Manager
What a banner year it’s been for Chinese cuisine in the Bay Area.
New darlings like Four Kings, Happy Crane, and Fù Huì Huá dominated the buzz of the city (for good reason!), all while pioneers like Old Mandarin, Yuanbao Jiaozi, and Hakka continue to be as good as ever. So I think it’s a perfect time to give Mister Jiu’s its flowers as it rings in its 10th anniversary. The duck is better than ever. The quiet dishes on the menu — the vegetables, the cheong fun — still sing loudly. The room always feels like a celebration. It broke the mold for Chinese restaurants in America, and Brandon Jew showed an entire generation of cooks how to chase their dreams.
— Paolo Lucchesi, Resy Editor-in-Chief
You probably wouldn’t expect…
… the caliber of food and beverage coming out of this gem from the outside: Snail Bar’s on a sleepier stretch of Shattuck Avenue in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, but it delivers the best of hyper-seasonal California cooking. There’s always a creative tostada topped with pristine raw seafood and local herbs, perfect crudités and a creamy umami-rich koji dip, and dishes like spot prawn risotto with pickled chanterelles. Also, the world needs more snails, and this is one of the few places you can always count on them to be tender and smothered in a rich and savory sauce.
— Lizzie Takimoto, Writer & Editor, Resy Editorial
My favorite meal this year…
… was at a winery in Sonoma. I’ve been a member at Scribe for a few years, and I would stop by anytime I visited Northern California (where I grew up) from New York. Locals often refer to Scribe as the “cool kids” winery, because of its minimal-intervention wines, its beautiful 19th-century hacienda, and its hospitality program, which features wine tastings paired with bites that source ingredients from the on-property garden. I think of these fresh, light meals as an introduction to the Chez Panisse aesthetic. (Co-owner Kelly Mariani, who runs Scribe’s culinary program, used to work at Alice Waters’ Berkeley restaurant.)
The winery also partners with highly regarded restaurateurs for chef-in-residence programs, and this October, just a few weeks after I made a permanent move back to the Bay Area, I snagged a reservation while Joshua McFadden, the chef-owner of Portland’s Ava Gene’s, was in the kitchen. My girlfriend and I sipped through Scribe’s just-released 2025 Nouveau of pinot noir; crisp, Chablis-style chardonnay; and pinot noirs planted both on the estate and off. These lovely wines came with pleasantly pungent garlic bread, fantastic fried olives, a fresh Caesar salad (never let anyone disparage a good Caesar), and amazingly sweet roasted golden beets. The coup de grâce was a fusilli with butternut squash, sausage, and sage — an appropriate finale, given that McFadden recently released a cookbook called “Six Seasons of Pasta.”
I had fancier meals in 2025, but enjoying the tasty food and wine on Scribe’s patio in the bright October sun felt extra-special. I’d been back in the Bay for a few weeks by then, but that was the first moment when I truly felt at home again.
— Justin Goldman, San Francisco Contributor, Resy Editorial
I can’t stop thinking…
… about a meal I had at Routier recently. There was pumpkin tempura, an egg yolk pasta with almond pesto and Jimmy Nardellos, and a hanger steak with pepper sauce. The standout dish for me, though, was their corn risotto with chanterelles, a perfect ode to the end of summery produce. Also, never skip their (rightfully famous) chocolate mousse.
— Randi W., Bay Area Partner Success Manager
The perfect neighborhood bar…
… might just be Friends and Family. A comfy-cool space, great drinks, outstanding food (and cake), friendly hospitality, and a constant rotation of community events. The world needs more spots like this — Oakland is losing a real one and I hope the F&F team finds another outlet for their care and creativity ASAP.
— Lizzie Takimoto, Writer & Editor, Resy Editorial
Every year I look back at my favorite meals…
… and every year I come back to the corner of California and 21st. Pearl 6101 is just it. The way Mel Lopez and her team showcase the bounty of the region while locking in on signatures is so beautiful. It’s the kind of place I wish I lived next door to, but also the kind of place I’d be stoked to go for special occasions.
— Paolo Lucchesi, Resy Editor-in-Chief
After serendipitously realizing…
… that my friend lived right around the corner from Jules, we decided to try out the Lower Haight pizzeria. We ordered the Fun Guy pizza and the charred cabbage appetizer, a perfect portion for just two people. The Fun Guy pie was a mushroom one, and boasted a lot of funky textures and flavors (think a variety of mushrooms, mushroom cream, pecorino, hornkuhkäse, and a black garlic tamarind sauce), and the crust was especially nice and crispy. The charred cabbage, topped with Calabrian chile butter, pumpkin seed gremolata, and katsuobushi, was perfectly hearty and tangy.
— Betsy Ding, Business Operations
Rintaro.
Because any “best of” list should begin and end with Rintaro.
— Paolo Lucchesi, Resy Editor-in-Chief
More Bay Area staff picks, right this way.
The views expressed in this article reflect personal experiences of American Express employees at the applicable restaurants — not American Express — and do not constitute professional business advice.
