The Resy Hit List: Where In San Francisco You’ll Want to Eat in Oct. 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
- Harvest Time in Sonoma: The grapes came in early this year, but the Sonoma County Harvest Fair still takes place Oct. 10 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. While you’re up on the Sonoma side of wine country, make a reservation for a great meal — be it Asian in Sebastopol at Ramen Gaijin or Khom Loi, or fine dining in Sonoma at Valley Bar & Bottle or Enclos — and a tasting at one of the area’s many great wineries, whether at a beautiful estate like Littorai, Emeritus, Merry Edwards, Hamel Family, or Copain, or a fun urban tasting room like Kosta Browne, Arnot-Roberts, Cobb, Idlewild, or Hirsch Vineyards . For more ideas, check out our new Insider’s Guide to Sonoma, as well as our advice on how to spend 72 hours there.
- Viva Italia!: Oct. 11, meanwhile, brings one of San Francisco’s oldest and biggest parties, the San Francisco Italian Heritage Festival & Parade. Flour + Water Pizzeria and The Red Window both have special offers for parade-side tables. Even if you don’t book one of those, we know you’ll want an Italian meal to close out a day of festivities in North Beach. Classic options include Cafe Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola’s restaurant in the landmark, flatiron-style Sentinel Building; Firenze by Night, which has been slinging plates of potato gnocchi for nearly 40 years; Trattoria Contadina, another decades-old neighborhood spot, where you can watch the cable cars rattle by while you sup on saltimbocca; and the legendary Stinking Rose, where no breath mint can stand up to the 40-clove roasted chicken.
- Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month: Which runs through Oct. 15, and the Bay Area is naturally home to a range of restaurants that reflect all manner of Hispanic cultures. For Mexican, options include Bombera, Colibri Mexican Bistro, Barrio, Loló, and Zazil Cocina Mexicana, plus Odin for mezcal, Tahona Mercado for all the agave spirits, and Cantina Los Mayas for Mexican wine. For Peruvian, there’s Kaiyo — as well as the brand-new Kaiyo Handroll Bar — in the city and Suspiro in San Jose. To head further south (in spirit), go east to Pleasanton for Argentine empanadas and steaks at Brava Garden Eatery or Walnut Creek for Galpão Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse (which also has locations in Napa and Cupertino).
- Spooky Szn: Halloween celebrations for all ages and persuasions are scattered around the Bay Area, but we’ve got a restaurant for you to haunt regardless of which you’re attending. For adult-oriented revelry, the Castro has long been the city’s most enthusiastic neighborhood, and you can get a bite at Aíso, Fable, or Pasta Panino; the Marina is also popular for costumed pub crawlers, and options there include Norcina (plus their walk-in sister bar, Frankie) and Popi’s Oysterette. Farther afield, families going to the Bay’s most spiritually possessed building, San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House, can pair that with a fun stop at Santa Clara’s Hello Kitty Cafe. And if you take the kids out to the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, have yourself a grown-up meal at Evangeline Cuisine.
New to the Hit List (Oct. 2026)
Fù Huì Huá, Izakaya Rintaro, Prubechu, Vicinity, Bar Esper.
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.
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 in July. Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn, a celebrity chef in Thailand who earned Michelin stars at Bangkok’s Le Du and Nusara, has joined forces with local chefs Tee Atthapon of Song Wat to open Saam in SOMA, and to say it has been a hit would be putting it mildly; Eater, for one, called it the “most important new Thai restaurant in America.” Nothing about the menu is mild, either. “Saam” is Thai for “three,” a reference to the kitchen’s focus on three key flavor profiles — spicy, salty, and sour — in dishes like Monterey squid with glass noodles in black ink sauce. To learn more, we’ve got plenty of details.
3. 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.
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. Prubechu Mission District
Twelve years after first opening (and seven years after taking up its current Mission location), Prubechu is still one of America’s most special restaurants, where Guam natives Shawn Naputi and Shawn Camacho shine a light on the cuisine and culture of the Mariana Islands. Big winners from the kitchen include Chamorro sweet rolls with whipped butter and coconut vinegar, tangy barbecued pork ribs, crispy rainbow trout escabeche, and braised cassava with confit scallions. (The Fiesta Table offering is a great way to try the breadth of the cuisine, and at $96 it’s one of the city’s best tasting-menu values.) Sitting in the yard, with a live band playing and delicious plates flying around, you’ll feel like you’re at a party on an island beach.
6. Valley Bar & Bottle Sonoma
This Sonoma Plaza hit is a store (and more) for all seasons. Shoppers can pick up a bottle of olive oil or natural wine or a picnic blanket, while diners enjoy top-level cooking throughout the day. Weekend brunch options range from chilaquiles to chicken-broth noodles with egg and chilli oil; lunch brings mezze plates and sandwiches stacked with mortadella or crab. Dinner is where Emma Lipp and Stephanie Reagor, who shared a 2026 Beard nomination, really flex. One night your main course might be a pork chop with pickled radicchio and tonnato; another, a duck leg confit with cherries or a Oaxacan mole. The farm-fresh ingredients will always shine—all the more if you’ve scored a seat beneath the paper lamps in the tented backyard.
7. Bar Esper Union Square & The Tenderloin
This “tavern with a travel habit” didn’t invent Japanese-Portuguese cuisine — in fact, tempura was born when Portuguese missionaries brought flour-battering and deep-frying to Japan in the 16th century — but at Bar Esper, which opened at the Tenderloin’s Hotel Spero in May, you’ll get a deep dive into dishes that draw from both culinary traditions. Azorean-inspired braised short rib in Japanese curry, sausage and shrimp dumplings with black garlic aioli, and malasadas with lemon-matcha curd are just a few standouts. The drinks are carefully tuned up as well, with a cocktail list designed by bartender extraordinaire Jacques Bezuidenhout that leans into Japanese spirits and a solid selection of Iberian wines, including Rare Wine Co. Madeiras. For lots more, our Rundown has you covered.
8. Fù Huì Huá Mission District
Fù Huì Huá was a hit upon opening in 2025, with both the Chronicle and Eater naming the Chinese omakase place from Shanghai-born chef William Ge and his son, Tao Ge, as the Bay Area’s best new restaurant of the year. Those rave reviews, combined with the diminutive size of the space — only eight counter seats for the 10-course, seasonal meal — also made it the toughest table in the Bay. In an effort to make Fù Huì Huá a little more accessible (and to fight scalpers and bots), the restaurant has changed its reservation protocol. Now, prospective diners should sign up for Tock’s Notify waitlist, and seats will be awarded by lottery, with priority given to those who haven’t booked in the last two months. We’re not saying it’s easy now, but we’re telling you there’s a chance …
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. Izakaya Rintaro The Mission
Rintaro has an argument for being the best izakaya in the U.S., and at the very least we think it’s one of the 40 restaurants in America that’s worth a journey. While you’ll find a selection of sashimi plates, the best dishes here are cooked, be they charcoal-grilled or fried (the Kurobata tonkatsu, cuts of Berkshire pork loin breaded in panko, is the perfect combo of crackling outside and tender inside). The housemade silken tofu will convince any bean curd skeptic, and bowls of piping hot, hand-rolled udon are the ideal winter warmer. Chef Sylvan Mishima Brackett’s sourcing is as immaculate as his preparation, and the result is an alluring combination of Bay Area bounty and Tokyo-level precision.
11. Sorrel Pacific Heights
The team at Sorrel made news last year with two flashy openings in the Ferry Building — the fine-dining restaurant Arquet and the wildly popular Parachute Bakery — but the best place to taste chef Alex Hong’s cooking remains his Michelin-starred Pacific Heights place. The name of the game here is seasonal tasting menus (either five courses for $125 or eight courses for $195, not including drink pairings), with recent dishes including barbecued lion’s mane mushrooms with kombu and farro, bay scallops and Dungennes crab with wasabi and miso, and an ox-tongue pastrami tart. If you think those all sound good, the artistic presentations might actually look even better. If you haven’t booked, Sorrel has eight first-come, first-served seats at the bar, where you can order a selection of dishes à la carte.
12. Divan West Berkeley
The latest design-forward spot on Berkeley’s posh Fourth Street, Divan, from the team behind San Francisco’s Lokma and Taksim, opened for lunch in June, with dinner service following in July. The space is beautiful, with a vaulted ceiling, sunlight streaming in through high windows, and lots of greenery, including a single tree rising from the center of the room. The menu is modern Turkish — think mezze platters, fattoush salad, kebabs, and boat-shaped flatbreads known as pide, with dinner expanding to include larger plates like branzino and lamb chops. A few special treats lie behind the bar, such as Turkish and Greek beers, barrel-aged old-fashioneds and Manhattans, and a Mediterranean take on an espresso martini that blends vodka, nutmeg-infused Turkish coffee, and saffron syrup.
13. The Wolf Piedmont
At least a few East Bay diners shed tears this summer, when Rich and Rebekah Wood announced they were closing Oakland’s Wood Tavern after nearly 20 years. We can dry our eyes, though, as Burdell’s Geoff Davis is taking over that Rockridge space, and the Woods are still serving their impeccably executed seasonal California cuisine on Piedmont Avenue, at The Wolf. The kitchen finds inventive ways to combine international and down-home dishes — duck liver pâte with buttermilk biscuits, roasted beets and carrots with pumpkin seed salsa macha, Spanish octopus with buttermilk-yogurt sauce — all served in a comfortable space in a lovely old Craftsman home that for decades housed the East Bay icon Bay Wolf. Bonus points if you snag a table on the covered patio on a warm evening.
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. Milos Taverna Cow Hollow
Summery weather makes us think of the Mediterranean, and Milos Taverna brings all the blue-and-white spirit of its namesake Cycladic island. Opened in March by the owners of nearby Milos Meze, this Cow Hollow spot plays the hits: dolmades, tzatziki, platters of cured anchovies, horiatiki salads, spanokapita, grilled octopus, and heaping plates of moussaka, souvlaki, and lamb chops. The wine list also pulls from the homeland, with xinomavro from Paros, agiorgitiko from Mykonos, assyrtiko from Thessaly, and, yes, pine-resin-infused retsina. (There’s also a decent selection of California wines, if you fear trying to pronounce Greek grape names.) Sit next to the mural of Santorini — or in the spacious parklet out front — and you’ll probably start reminiscing about that European vacation you took way back when.
17. Polenta Trattoria Friulana Alamo Square
San Francisco’s not short on Italian joints, but Polenta Trattoria, which opened in May in a small space just a block from the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square, has taken the rare step of serving the cuisine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Chef Michele Gargani is from the region, and given the mountainous nature of that part of Italy, it’s no surprise that the food here is hearty: breaded pork chops, cured Alpine trout with Liptauer cheese spread, egg noodles with housemade sausage ragu, the traditional potato-cheese pie frico. Wine lovers, take note: Owner Giulio De Monte Gaspardo has worked as a sommelier and a wine importer, and his list is full of Friulian specialties, such as ribolla gialla and the rare red schioppettino.
18. True Laurel Mission District
Chef David Barzelay (Lazy Bear, JouJou) and beverage director Nicolas Torres opened their Mission District cocktail bar back in 2018, and eight years in, they’re not resting on their, ahem, laurels. There’s a drink for every palate, whether you’re looking for a fresh take on a classic (the Freezer Sazerac, with rye, brandy, and arak), something new and inventive (the A Lil Bark, Alot of Bite, with kvass, rakia, and verjus), or something non-alcoholic (the Salted Grapefruit Spritz, with grapefruit oleo). The kitchen serves one of the Bay’s best burgers, a patty melt of dry-aged beef on pain de mie, at dinner and at weekend brunch. Look out for collabs with notable bars from around the world: Vandell came up from L.A. in August, and De Vie visits from Paris in September.
19. Vicinity South Bay
South Bay diners got a new destination restaurant earlier this year, when the team at the Los Gatos bistro and wine bar Tasting House opened this 16-seat speakeasy-style place in an attached space. At Vicinity, chef Julian Silvera serves a tasting menu of 13 courses inspired by California ingredients and landscapes. For the “Santa Cruz” course, find Monterey Bay abalone steamed in kombu, Hokkaido scallop cured in bay laurel, compressed green mango, and apricot sambal, all served together on the half shell. For the “East Bay,” it’s Superior Ranch lamb tenderloin with fried masa and smoked corn puree, nestled against a bush of fried corn silk that evokes the golden inland hills. Looking for a reason to get in the vicinity of Vicinity? Maybe it’s time to explore the wonderful wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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.
