Where to Dine With a Group in San Francisco

Liholiho Yacht Club’s Ohana Table is a shared family feast for up to nine guests. The hightop table situated in front of the restaurant is conveniently close to the bar, so your drinks will come cold and come fast. There are two settings, one at 5 p.m. and another at 8 p.m., and comes with all the classics and then some: tuna poke on a crispy nori cracker, duck liver mousse on banana bread, shaved pig’s head salad, swordfish katsu, housemade spam, and much more. Oh and *the* baked Hawaii for dessert, of course.

Rich Table may be a small, intimate restaurant (and one of our absolute favorites), but you can still grab a good group of six to eight folks. If you’re a group, you can opt for their wonderful and inventive, seasonally changing California fare via a family-style, four-course meal. There are two seatings: 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

Loló has a basement for private dining with a full menu and bar service—you can do a full buyout for 30 or just a partial for 12. Food is served family-style, and there’s a separate sound system if you want to plug in your phone and play DJ to make it a party.

Hidden below Liholiho Yacht Club is the Gen-Gen Room, which is newly reopened after a long hiatus.  It’s now a private event space, bookable via Resy. The beautiful jewel box of a room can fit 10 to 20 diners, and the price includes a seated, family-style menu, Tuesday through Saturday. More details here.

If you’ve got somewhere between seven to 12 in your group at Copra, you can get a four- or five-course family style dinner with optional (but highly recommended) wine pairings.  Chef Sri’s wonderful sea-centric coastal Indian fare includes things like black cod wrapped in banana leaf served with ghee rice, spicy-crusted hamachi collar with fish head gravy, and so much more.

There’s a long table in the very vibey courtyard at Rintaro that sets up to 12; there, you get a set menu that features some of the hits and classics throughout the menu at this 10-year-old Californian izakaya. There’s also a private back room that can seat up to 22.

There’s only way to dine at Ernest, and that’s go big and roll home. If there’s a large group, the restaurant will put you in the private dining room upstairs near the kitchen, where everyone will be treated to the Let The Kitchen Cook for You Option. The kitchen will size up each dish, which will be shared family style: Beef tartare with sushi rice and ikura. Kaluga caviar with house made tater tots and crème fraiche. Nashville pork neck tonkatsu. Kakigori the size of your head for dessert.

Load up on dim sum and much more at Hong Kong Lounge II with the chef’s special menu. This option is good for 10 people, must be reserved 24 hours in advance, and in addition to deluxe dim sum comes with off-menu items like double-steamed conch, chicken soup with cordyceps, crispy stuffed chicken with sticky rice, and so much more. Load up that lazy susan and get busy.

Ain’t no party like a pizza party, and the glassed-off group room at this North Beach pizzeria is the perfect spot. Boozie slushies and bottles of natty wine. Pizzas in awesome and inventive flavor combinations like cacio e pepe or taleggio with mushrooms, kale, and roasted garlic sauce. And soft serve for dessert, of course.

The giant patio is the best way to feast with your besties at Prubechu, San Francisco’s singular restaurant. Let them cook for you with the fiesta table option, where for $90 per person, you’ll get all the Guamanian goodies: red rice, chicken skewers, iceberg salad with wasabi ranch, chicken kelaguen, Chamorro potato salad, and much more. Good service, good food, good vibes. What else do you need? Oh. They’ve got a great selection of wines, too.

The more the merrier at Mission Chinese Food. The more people, the more food you can order. This menu is meant for sharing and can easily be scaled up. So if you’re with a group of eight, make sure you order at least two of everything: two kung pao pastramis, two numbing Chongqing chicken wings, two thrice cooked bacon and rice cakes, two tiger salads, four Westlake lamb dumplings, Sichuan kimchi, smashed cucumbers, two cumin lamb ribs, and two stir-fired yu choy. That’s a darn good order. You’re welcome.

Flour + Water’s bustling sister restaurant offers up the Pasta Shop Dinner Party Table for all parties of seven to 10 diners. You’ll be seated at the big table within the adjacent Pasta Shop for a dinner to remember. For a larger and private experience, you can book their secret upstairs dining room for up to 32 of your besties.

The large table in the dining room seats up to 16, and weather permitting, you can also buy out the rooftop patio. Food is served as a shared family-style feast, appropriately. Chips and dip. Crying tiger shrimp. Catfish green curry. And so much more.

Feast in Michelin-starred Thai fare at Nari, where you have two options for large groups: the upstairs private Suda Room on the mezzanine level, which seats up to 24, as well as the semi-private wine room near the main dining room, which seats up to 12. Both options give you the Chef’s Pick Tasting Menu, which is served family-style and features the full-range of Nari classics — and then some.

Del Popolo’s open-sky back patio is a charming urban oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle: it’s private, heated, covered, and can seat up to 40 guests. There’s also a smaller patio adjacent to the garden that can seat up to 12, where you can feast on all the perfectly-charred leopard-spotted pies to your heart’s content.

There are two private dining spaces above the pasta palace that is Flour + Water: The Test Kitchen, which fits up to 10 people, and the Dough Room, which seats up to 14. Both options feature a family-style chef’s choice tasting menu with optional but highly recommended wine pairings.