The Resy Hit List: Where In San Francisco You’ll Want to Eat in Aug. 2026
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There’s no question we hear more often: Where should I go eat? And while we at Resy know it’s an honor to be the friend who everyone asks for restaurant advice, we also know it’s a complicated task. That’s where the Resy Hit List comes in.
Consider it your essential resource for dining in San Francisco and the Bay Area: a monthly-updated guide to the restaurants that you won’t want to miss — tonight or any night.
Four Things In the Bay Area Not to Miss This Month
- Rock Out for Outside Lands: The Bay Area’s biggest summer music festival, Outside Lands, comes to Golden Gate Park Aug. 7-9. Attendees who are looking for a place to eat out in the Avenues can hit Outerlands for brunch, DamnFine for pizza, IPOT for hot pot, Cantina Los Mayas for Mexican, Violet’s for burgers, Pearl 6101 for bistro food, and Harajuku Sushi for Japanese. If you didn’t get tickets, console yourself with a meal at one of the restaurants working the festival — Azalina’s, Brenda’s French Soul Food, Kaiyo Restaurant, Sorrel — or a tasting at one of the wineries pouring there, such as Aperture, Auteur, Clos du Val, Cobb, Copain, Kosta Browne, Roederer, or Turley.
- Mabuhay, Bay Area: The 33rd annual Pistahan Parade & Festival, the largest Filipino procession on the West Coast, takes place Aug. 8-9 at Yerba Buena Gardens. Keep the party going with a visit to one of the Bay Area’s fantastic modern Filipino restaurants. In the city, try newly Michelin-starred Naides, with creative dishes like sinigang with abalone, or Mestiza, with its pork adobo and tofu sisig bowls. Just south of the city, in Brisbane, check out the historic 7 Mile House, a sports bar serving Filipino-influenced pub grub, while up in Napa Carabao makes classic dishes with attention to detail befitting chef Jade Cunningham’s French Laundry pedigree.
- Celebrate Indian Independence: Not that we ever need an excuse to eat Indian food, but Aug. 15 is India Independence Day. The Bay is home to a variety of restaurants where you can celebrate. For vegetarian Gujarati cuisine, chef Heena Patel’s acclaimed Besharam in San Francisco is a must. (Read more about it here). The options increase as you drive south: Favorite Indian Restaurant in Hayward does Punjabi and North Indian cuisine; at its locations in Santa Clara and Fremont, Garam Mirchi offers Rajasthani pakoras and daal, as well as momos; Varam in Redwood City has halal curries, dosas, and biryani; and Thecha in Sunnyvale plucks from several regional cusines, in addition to serving Indo-Chinese fusion dishes.
- Eat Like an East Coaster: Want to dine at some of the best restaurants on the East Coast without booking a flight? This month, you’ll have that opportunity thanks to a few exciting guest chef residencies. The Lore welcomes chef Fidel Caballero from New York’s Michelin-starred Corima for a Northern Mexican feast on Aug. 7 and 8. Penny Roma brings in the team from New York’s Cervo’s for Iberian prix-fixe dinners — think seafood towers and piri piri chicken — on Aug. 10 and 11. (A special Cervo’s-inspired tuna conserva sandwich will also be available at the Flour + Water Pasta Shop the week of the 10th.) And chef Aaron Silverman of Rose’s Luxury and Pineapple and Pearls in Washington, D.C., will be at 7 Adams on Aug. 23 and 24.
New to the Hit List (Aug. 2026)
Bar Auklet, Bombera, Dingles Public House, Esme, Saam.
1. Mister Jiu’s Chinatown
Chinese fine-dining has exploded in the city, with the acclaimed openings of Four Kings, Happy Crane, and Fù Huì Huá, but Brandon Jew paved the way when he opened his groundbreaking restaurant in a historic Chinatown banquet hall 10 years ago. Mister Jiu’s has seen shifts over the last decade — notably, going from la carte dining to a tasting menu-only model before reinstating a la carte last year. Perhaps the best way to experience the cuisine is to book the Peking Style Duck Banquet meal, centered around a Liberty Farm duck roasted whole and served with savory pancakes, peanut butter hoisin, and duck liver mousse. In recognizing Jew’s 10 years of trailblazing, The New York Times recently concluded much the same.
2. SAAM China Basin
San Francisco is already home to some of the best Thai restaurants in the U.S. (Nari, Kin Khao, Prik Hom), and that list just got a flashy new addition with Saam, Thitid Tassanakajohn’s first place in America, which celebrated its grand opening in late July. Tassanakajohn, who has earned Michelin stars at Bangkok’s Le Du and Nusara, has joined forces with two local Thai chefs, Tee Atthapon of Song Wat and Ty Choosuwan, to take over the former Sun and Moon space in SoMa. The menu is a la carte and family-style, focusing on classic Thai curries and meat dishes, but this team’s bona fides ensure that it’ll be anything but ordinary.
3. Carabao Napa
Last June, French Laundry alums Jade and Mathew Cunningham opened Carabao, focused on the cuisine of Jade’s native Philippines and named for the country’s national animal, the water buffalo. The storefront is in a big, unattractive strip mall, but the interior is bright and lively, and the food even more so: Sisig tacos are topped with crispy pork and a runny quail egg; barbecued pork skewers are perfectly charred and garnished with a banh mi–esque blend of carrot, onion, and cilantro; a winter lugaw ginger rice porridge is finished with shaved black truffle. The must-order entrée is the crispy kare kare, a baseball-sized croquette filled with oxtail, floating in a coconut-peanut sauce with tripe.
4. Bar Auklet Point Reyes Station
Point Reyes Station has been in the news lately, thanks to tech entrepreneur Chris Hulls, who has invested heavily in West Marin. Among the beneficiaries are local seafood lovers, who can now dine at this brand-new restaurant (in the former Station House Cafe space) from Marshall Store owner Shannon Gregory. Unsurprisingly, local oysters are a fixture on the menu, as are pretty plates of pickled anchovy toast, garlic noodles with Dungeness crab, cured mackerel aguachile, and grilled items including duck heart skewers, black cod, and a rib eye for two. A fun wine list features New Cali icons like Arnot Roberts and Littorai, and the outdoor tables are a great place for happy hour, when burgers, fish tacos, and fried chicken are available for $15 each.
5. Snail Bar Temescal District
Snail Bar has been a hit pretty much from the day it opened in 2021, drawing big crowds for its fun French-y cooking, natural wines, and cozy vibe. The restaurant underwent a big sea change this January, however, when chef Andres Giraldo Florez announced he was pulling up stakes for the South of France. Successor Zachary Breaux of Left on Madeline, who grew up in Louisiana and Texas, has added a bit of a Creole inflection to his early menus, with dishes such as avocado tostadas with Maggi crema and salsa macha, fried quail with chili crisp, and steak tartare with pork cracklins and blackening spice. But regulars need not fear: staples such as the ham and cheese sandwich and the cashew-miso-butter snails remain.
6. Flour + Water Mission Gulch
This Mission District stalwart has justly been regarded as the Bay Area’s premier pasta palace since Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow opened it in 2009, and while the F+W brand has since expanded to include nearby Penny Roma and an armada of pizza shops, the original remains the flagship. The kitchen still slings its famous pasta tasting menu, which offers the chance to taste creations such as carrot agnolotti, pea leaf cavatelli, and classic tortellini in brodo, but Flour + Water is always coming up with alternative options, like the current late-night Al Dente After Dark prix-fixe, a three-course meal that’s served from 8:45 p.m. to close and includes dishes such as halibut crudo, taleggio scarpinocc, and charred wheat gargati pasta with smoked hen. No matter what time you’re going, our guide to making a Resy is right here.
7. Sons & Daughters The Mission
Accolades keep pouring in for Sons & Daughters, so it’s a good thing the place is a bit roomier these days, having moved last fall from its old Nob Hill spot to a larger Mission District space. The intensity that goes into preparing the dishes is dizzying: Mount Lassen trout is cold-smoked over Douglas fir, poached, brushed with pine cone syrup and Meyer lemon zest, and served atop a cream of rose geranium, elderflower, and chervil; an ice cream is made from grilled apples and plated atop an acorn-flour cake with spruce-needle cream and reduced Granny Smith apple juice. With 24 such courses coming, a meal here will set you back $315 – but it remains a nonpareil option for that truly special meal. (And don’t miss the wine pairings.)
8. Bombera Oakland
Perhaps no dish better captures the diversity and complexity of Mexican cuisine than mole, and chef Dominica Rice Cisneros leans into that multifaceted identity at her bright, white-walled restaurant in Oakland’s Lower Dimond District. Rice Cisneros grew up in California but studied the famously labor-intensive sauce in Mexico, and she serves it in iterations such as red chile pipian mole with swordfish, mole verde with duck carnitas, and black mole with roasted butternut squash. The menu here isn’t only about mole, as other offerings include Tulum-style roasted beets, smoked trout tostadas, and carne asada huaraches, along with agave spirits ranging from Tequila and mezcal to bacanora and raicilla.
9. Enclos Sonoma
The best holiday gift of 2024 was the December debut of Enclos, Sonoma County’s most exciting restaurant opening in years. Located in a Victorian house just off Sonoma Plaza, Enclos is owned by Mac and Leslie McQuown of Stone Edge Farm Vineyards & Winery (their wines have a prominent presence on the bottle list) and helmed by chef Brian Limoges, who brought Michelin-level cred from Atelier Crenn, Quince, and Saison. Limoges has since earned three stars of his own, thanks to an eight-to-10-course tasting menu that sources from Stone Edge Farm’s organic gardens and other local producers. The ever-changing dishes blend French and Asian influences: Monterey spot prawns with nectarine and shiso, Wolfe Ranch quail with artichoke and grilled roses, clam chowder-inspired chawanmushi. It’s a splurge — $295 a person — but this is as fine as fine dining gets.
10. Good Good Culture Club The Mission
The sister restaurant to Liholiho Yacht Club has proved to be just as big a hit as its acclaimed predecessor since its 2022 opening, thanks to its colorful, always bumping Mission District space and Chef Ravi Kapur’s playful, Southeast Asian-influenced cuisine: Think tuna tataki with laab, spicy crying tiger shrimp salad in a coconut-makrut sauce with crispy butter beans, and grilled pork jowls in oyster sauce. The best way to partake in the festive vibe is to get a big group together and go in on an Ohana Table, which runs $70 apiece for eight to 16 diners, not including drinks. Spoiler alert: There were will be drinks, be it a round of house mai tais or pickleback martinis or a bottle of exceedingly well-priced Broc Cellars “chuggable” chilled red.
11. JouJou Jeddah
It feels as if we waited forever for the opening of JouJou, the latest restaurant from Lazy Bear and True Laurel owner David Barzelay, but the French seafooder finally landed in the Design District in early March. Our patience has been rewarded with variety. Want to go big? Look to headliners such as a $125 caviar crêpe and a $71 filet mignon aux poivre. On the other hand, everything on the menu is served a la carte, so you don’t have to sign up for a 15-course marathon. And the bar opens at 4 p.m. allowing walk-ins to snag drinks, bites from the raw bar, and pommes frites. No matter which you choose, you’ll find yourself in one of San Francisco’s snazziest spots, a 6,500-square-foot-space swathed in marble, gold accents, and glass.
12. Nudi Blue Berkeley
Jezreel Rojas and Krissana Tussanaprasit already had one of the East Bay’s most popular brunch spots, the Northern Thai restaurant Tanzie’s, and this spring they expanded with this tea house. Nudi Blue focuses in particular on artisanal teas from the mountains around Tussanaprasit’s native Chiang Mai, poured alongside pastries (mini guava croissants, pear and lychee tartlets) and tea sandwiches (smoked duck, blueberry coulis, and Camembert on toasted shokupan) as part of a $65 afternoon tea service. You can also order a la carte, but we recommend settling into the cozy San Pablo Avenue space and letting the treats on the table transport you to a Thailand you might never have imagined. And keep an eye out for dinner service, which is slated to debut in the coming months, with an emphasis on raw bar selections.
13. Frankie’s Marina
Norcina is a Marina District go-to for wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas and Aperol spritzes, and earlier this year Chef Kaitlynn Baumann took the dog — actually a portrait of her dog, Franklin, in which the “goodest boy” dons a jacket and an ascot — for a walk down the block to a new bar. The highlights on the drink list at Frankie’s include ice-cold martinis that come with sidecars; Negronis, one of which employs a house vermouth with a bartending dog on the label; and wines by the glass poured from magnums. The food menu, meanwhile, is composed of crudités, charcuterie boards, brick-oven-cooked skewers ranging from charred squid to steak and guanciale, and sandwiches (don’t miss the mortadella or the lobster roll). And, in case you’re wondering, yes, the friendly yellow lab who lends the bar his name is a regular.
Walk-ins only. Find more info here.
14. Esme San Francisco
Chef Susan Dunn knows her way around a neighborhood restaurant, having helmed Richmond District favorite Pearl 6101 since 2018. In June, she expanded her reach to Divisadero, opening Esme on the ground floor of the 19th-century Victorian that houses the Metro Hotel. The cooking here is classic French bistro with touches of California seasonal freshness: Summer items include chicken liver mousse with strawberry-beet mostarda, seared halloumi with grilled stone fruit and espelette, seared black cod with Romano beans, roasted chicken with polenta and sweet corn, and a wine-by-the-glass list that mostly keeps pours under $16. It’s not revolutionary, but as Dunn knows, a restaurant that nails the simple stuff is destined to be a hit.
15. Rose Pizzeria – SF Inner Richmond
The original Berkeley location of Rose Pizzeria was thrust into the spotlight in 2024, when The New York Times named it one of the the best pizza places in the country. That made Gerad Goble and Alexis Rorabaugh’s tiny East Bay spot a tough table, but it’s now at least a little easier to get your hands on one of their crackly, blistered thin-crust pies, as they opened the doors to their long-awaited San Francisco location in late April. The Inner Sunset space is bigger, and the menu is similar, with a few salads (in particular the spicy Caesar, with Calabrian chile) and starters and a local-leaning natural wine list to go with pies that range from classic Margherita to combos like the broccoli-rabe-and-confit-garlic Green Deluxe. For something a little different, try the Tonda Romana, Rose’s take on Chicago tavern-style pizza.
16. The Lore | Tasting Salon Financial District
Chef Seth Stowaway came to a fork in the road when he closed his Michelin-starred live-fire restaurant Osito last year — and he decided to take both paths. On the one hand, he opened Chicken Fried Palace, a down-home Southern-style diner in the Mission; on the other, he launched The Lore, a hyper-secretive, 10-seat tasting salon in a former night watchman’s quarters above Harrington’s Bar & Grill in the Financial District. The address and menu aren’t publicly listed, but Stowaway shared with us that the cuisine is an outgrowth of his cooking at Osito, with intricate dishes — typically around 20 of them — such as Dungeness crab flan topped with caviar and English pea mousse or oak-grilled New York steak with mole. There’s only one seating a night Thursday through Saturday, so make your Resy before the word gets out.
17. Stella Kenwood
It comes as little surprise that this Italian place has become a big hit in the year since it opened — after all, it’s from Ari Weiswasser and and Spencer Waite, the same team that brought Sonoma County one of its most beloved restaurants, Glen Ellen Star. At Stella, perched on Highway 12 in Kenwood, the name of the game is housemade pasta — from mafaldine in “spicy pink” habanero vodka sauce to rigatoni in a milk-braised pork and beef Bolognese — and a mozzarella bar featuring mozz and burrata imported from Puglia and served with sourdough and a range of fixings, such as mortadella and giardiniera. Whether it’s for lunch (on the weekend) or dinner, Stella has established itself as a can’t miss meal for anyone who’s exploring Sonoma County.
18. Restaurant Naides Nob Hill
The latest entry to the Bay’s growing Filipino fine-dining list, Naides opened in the former Sons & Daughters space on Bush Street and almost immediately earned a Michelin star. Chef Patrick Gabon, a native of the Philippines who worked at Sons & Daughters and at Slovenia’s two-Michelin-starred Milka, offers a tasting menu that zips around the classics of Filipino cuisine, albeit with serious technical and presentational shine. Lumpia here is a canapé of banana miso, pickled jackfruit, and nashi pear; sinigang, typically a savory and sour soup, is served as dainty slices of abalone with a tableside pour-over of dry-aged beef broth. Beverage director Celine Wuu, formerly of Benu, takes equal care with the drink menu, offering both wine pairings and inventive nonalcoholic options, like fermented kiwi juice with galangal-infused celery.
19. Dingles Public House Hayes Valley
The Bay Area doesn’t exactly have a shortage of pubs, but Dingles brought a previously unparalled take on the genre when it opened in Hayes Valley last fall. Owned by chef George Dingle and his wife, Anissa, who worked both worked under Corey Lee at Monsieur Benjamin, this is the kind of gastropub that mostly exists in romanticized cinematic versions of England: perfectly executed classics like Welsh rarebit, Scotch eggs, fish and chips, and beef Wellington (on Wednesdays only, in limited quantites), along with a Sunday roast, all served in a cozy space with a fireplace, dark leather banquettes, and paintings of woodland creatures in Victorian garb. Taken together, it’s enough to make satisfied diners pull a Madonna and start speaking in an affected English accent.
20. The Big Four Nob Hill
For the most part, San Francisco’s best new restaurants aspire to the cutting edge, but The Big Four trades very much on nostalgia, right down to its name, a reference to the 19th-century founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. With its dark wood and leather, the ageless-looking space inside the recently reimagined Huntington Hotel seems aimed at a Gilded Age tycoon, and chef David Intonato’s menu sticks to San Francisco steakhouse staples — think wedge salads, shrimp cocktail, cioppino, and char-grilled cuts. The execution is pitch-perfect, though, and when you bite into a charred yet bloody-rare chunk of dry-aged ribeye and wash it down with an ice-cold martini (especially the signature Big Four Martini, a blend of gin, vodka, manzanilla sherry and dry vermouth), you’ll likely acknowledge that the classics are classics for a reason.
