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
- SF Summer Is Here: Adios, Karl the Fog, hello patio dining. San Franciscans know that our real summer happens in September and October, and with the prospect of a monster El Niño coming this winter, now’s the time to dine and drink alfresco. Some of our favorite spots are the festive yards at Prubechu and Mestiza; the greenery-lined spaces at Izakaya Rintaro, Fable, Colibri, and Blue Plate; the picnic tables at um.ma; and the roof decks at Good Good Culture Club, Poesia, Cavaña, and Kaiyo Rooftop Bar. Wine lovers also shouldn’t sleep on San Francisco Wine Society, which has a bocce court hidden out behind behind the building. And we’ve got lots more ideas here.
- Shuck Yeah: The always-chilly waters of the Pacific mean we on the West Coast can eat fresh oysters year-round — but the onset of September and the “R”-months is a great excuse to shuck some bivalves. Up in the world-renowned oyster country around Tomales Bay you can hit the Hog Island Oyster Co. crew’s Tony’s Seafood in Marshall, as well as the new Bar Auklet in Point Reyes Station. If you don’t feel like meandering out to West Marin, seafood-slingers closer to home include Sirene and Snail Bar in Oakland and Popi’s Oysterette and JouJou in the city. And one of our favorite deals is Aliment’s $1 oysters from 12 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturdays.
- Get Gussied Up: For classical music aficionados, September is tuxedo time, as SF Opera and the San Francisco Symphony both begin new seasons this month. As long as you’re getting dressed up, you may as well pair the performance with a Michelin-level meal. You’ll want to make a reservation well in advance for the eye-catching cuisine at Sons & Daughters, Kiln, Sorrel, and 7 Adams. David Barzelay’s restaurants Lazy Bear and JouJou are show-stoppers both for their service and their setting. The Big Four, meanwhile, offers the sort old-school fine-dining experience that opera-goers have been enjoying for decades.
- Game Time: The 49ers are the undisputed kings of the Bay Area sports scene, and they kick off the latest NFL season on September 10, with their home opener on the 20th. If you want to catch the game but aren’t up for Levi’s Stadium traffic, make a Resy at one of our favorite bars: There’s San Francisco Brewing Co, Harrington’s Bar & Grill, and SoMA Social in the city; Pinstripes in San Mateo; Corner Bar in Mill Valley; Drake’s Barrel House in San Leandro; and The Fourth Bore Tap Room and Grill in Orinda. Maybe the most spiritually correct choice, though, is 7 Mile House in Brisbane, just a Montana-to-Rice deep ball away from the Niners’ old home on Candlestick Point.
New to the Hit List (Sept. 2026)
Divan, Milos Taverna, Polenta Trattoria Friulana, Sorrel, True Laurel.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. Valley Bar + Bottle Downtown 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.
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.
