The Resy Hit List: Where In San Francisco You’ll Want to Eat Right Now
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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
- America’s Big Birthday: Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard that America’s 250th birthday, or semiquincentennial, is this month. If you want to go big on the big day, you could hit the special 4th of July brunch at Range Life in Livermore, or the 4th of July celebration of American Cuisine at The French Laundry in Yountville. Or, keep it keep it simple with a classic burger at Causwells, meat loaf and fried chicken at Blue Plate SF, or steaks and martinis at The Big Four, Osso Steakhouse, STK, or Alexander’s. Looking to celebrate a less attention-grabbing (but no less inspirational) anniversary? Make a Resy for Prubechu’s Guam Liberation Day party on July 26.
- Vive la France: America’s not the only country that marks its big revolution in July; our friends in France celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, and it’s a holiday that San Francisco has always enjoyed. The city’s annual Bastille Day Festival takes place on July 18, but you can extend your fête with a meal at one of the Bay’s many fantastic French and French-inspired restaurants. In San Francisco, there’s JouJou (which is hosting a party “Marie Antoinette would be proud of” on the 14th), mijoté, and the brand-new Esme; in the East Bay, you’ve got À Côté and Chez Panisse; and in wine country there’s Angèle Restaurant & Bar, Bouchon Bistro, and Troubadour Bread & Bistro. For wine lovers, meanwhile, Ungrafted in San Francisco is putting on a France vs USA tasting on July 11.
- Toast to Napa Valley.Wine country’s big summer soirée, Festival Napa Valley, turns 20 this year, with two weeks of events (including a Judgment of Paris opera at Charles Krug Winery and a grand tasting at The Meritage Resort) from July 4 to 19. Whether you make it up to the North Bay for the festival or later in the month, consult the Resy guide to Napa Valley to plan your tastings (we especially love Seavey, Clos du Val, and Hudson Ranch) and meals (you can’t go wrong with The Charter Oak or Ciccio). Carnivores, take note: On July 23, Chef Darryl Bell of Stateline Road Smokehouse is serving up Kansas City barbecue at Bear at Stanly Ranch.
- Winners Circle: In the last few weeks, most of the major food awards in America were dished out. Perhaps the Bay Area’s biggest winner was Sons & Daughters, which claimed a spot on the North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list, saw Harrison Cheney named a finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: California Award, and and had general manager Frida Blomdahl Hay nab a Michelin Service Award. In other news from Michelin, Enclos in Sonoma was awarded a third star, and Restaurant Naides in San Francisco and Troubadour Bread & Bistro in Healdsburg got their first stars. Read the full Resy Guide to the Bay Area’s 2026 Michelin winners right here.
New to the Hit List (July 2026)
Flour + Water, Frankie’s, Good Good Culture Club, Nudi Blue, Stella.
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.
Bonus: On May 9, Mister Jiu’s is hosting another of its star-studded 10th anniversary dinners.
2. Jilli – San Francisco Mission
Korean cuisine is having a moment, as restaurants across America go far beyond bibimbap and barbecue. Take, Jilli, a Los Angeles sool jib (a type of Korean bar that focuses on the traditional, naturally fermented rice wine makgeolli) that opened its first San Francisco location in the Mission District last year. A variety of styles of makgeolli are available, from sparkling to sweet — order a flight to get a full overview — and the tapas menu is designed to complement the beverage, with bites such as shrimp toast with chile vinaigrette, rigatoni alla vodka with kimchi, and the spicy rice-cake soup tteokbokki. The white-walled space and the picnic tables on the patio can get packed, but follow the house rules — “make mistakes,” “lose yourself” — and you’ll have an evening as lively as the microbes in the fermented fare.
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. 7 Adams Japantown
It’s no surprise that David and Serena Chow Fisher run one of the best restaurants in San Francisco; after 7 Adams’ late 2023 opening, they came up through some of New York’s heaviest-hitting kitchens, including Jean-Georges and Eleven Madison Park (read more about that journey here). At their Michelin-starred Japantown spot, diners can choose between a customizable five-course set and a more formal seven-course menu, or go big with the chef’s counter, which has just six seats each night for a 2.5-hour meal. The menus change often, depending on available ingredients and the chefs’ inspiration, but expect items like Monterey spot prawns with fermented Fresno chiles, plankton cavatelli, and Washugyu striploin. Check Resy to stay up on 7 Adams’ “Meet Us in San Francisco” series, featuring collaborations with acclaimed guest chefs from around the country.
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. Odin – Mexican Restaurant and Bar Jack London
At this colorful Oakland institution in the shadow of the Nimitz Freeway, mezcal is less a beverage and more a religion. Even if you think you know a lot about agave, you’ll probably learn something when you order, as the dedicated staff will walk you through flavor profiles, agave types, and growing regions across Mexico to help you choose from the 300-plus bottles on the list, many of them sourced from small farms and collectives. Feeling even more adventurous? Odin also offers sotol, raicilla, and bacanora (and yes, there’s Tequila). The food menu is shorter, but features creative, elevated takes on Mexican standbys: empanadas with smoked trout, mushroom chorizo queso fundido, sauteed shrimp alambre tacos, cardamom tres leches cake. Order a lot — all the more to enjoy your mezcal with.
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. Nari Japantown
Pim Techamuanvivit was already an international leader in Thai cooking thanks to Kin Khao, but she took things up a notch in 2019 with the opening of Nari, which presents a vision of Thai cuisine through a California fine-dining lens. Nari, located at Japantown’s Hotel Kabuki in a sleek tropical two-story space, has earned a Michelin star and acclaim from pretty much every food publication in America due to dishes such as veal sweetbreads in tamarind-Sriracha glaze, grilled Monterey squid with pork jowl, and Gaeng Moo Chamuang (braised pork belly and collard greens in coconut-free curry). Pro tip: Get an overview by opting for the $125 tasting menu.
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. Bar Panisse Berkeley
This highly-anticipated bar opening came last winter, taking over the former César space, next to Alice Waters’ California cuisine mothership, Chez Panisse. The cocktail list leans classic — sazeracs, martinis, gimlets — with three local beers on tap and a selection of about a dozen wines, all available by the glass, that leans toward lighter styles from France and Italy. Of course, you want to know about the food: buttery flatbread with a dipping sauce of herb oil and Calabrian chile, a Seven Moons Farm chicory salad with dates and fried sage, shell-on Gulf shrimp with salsa verde and aioli, roasted Fogline Farm chicken with chanterelle stuffing. If you think that sounds like a bar-bite-size approximation of Café Chez Panisse, you’d be right.
Walk-ins only. Find more info here.
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.
