Northern California feeds you differently from the rest of the country. The produce comes from the Central Valley, the seafood from the Pacific, the wine from Napa and Sonoma, and the cultural influences from every wave of immigration that has shaped the Bay Area over 175 years. The result is a food scene that is simultaneously more casual and more serious than its reputation suggests — Michelin-starred restaurants coexisting with taco trucks, dim sum palaces operating alongs

Arsicault Bakeries rarely inspire pilgrimage. Great restaurants do. But every so often a bakery produces something so extraordinary that people willingly stand in line for an hour, carry boxes of pastries onto airplanes, and rearrange travel itineraries just to visit. Arsicault is one of those places. This is the first bakery to earn a place in my Greatest Hits series, my collection of the finest restaurants and food experiences I've encountered around the world. Considering

Some of the best places in the Bay Area are the ones you have always known about and never thought to visit. Benicia was one of those places for me — less than an hour from Oakland, visible from the highway, mentioned by people I trusted, and persistently unexplored until I finally gave it a proper day. It turned out to be one of those rare small cities that rewards attention with something genuinely unexpected: a coherent historical identity, a bakery worth the drive on its

Some restaurants earn their reputation through a single extraordinary meal. Kokkari earns its reputation by delivering the same extraordinary meal, reliably, over twenty-five years. That consistency — in a city as competitive and restless as San Francisco — is itself a form of mastery. Since opening in 2000, Kokkari Estiatorio has become something rare: a restaurant that improves with familiarity, that rewards the regulars who keep returning, that feels as good on the fifteen

Lunar New Year is the most significant holiday in the Chinese calendar — and in California, home to the largest Chinese-American population in the United States, it is celebrated with a depth and authenticity that rivals anything you would find in Hong Kong or Shanghai. The restaurants below represent three very different expressions of Chinese regional cuisine, from classic dim sum in Emeryville to Sichuan cooking from a Beijing institution to Mandarin and Cantonese favorite

California's coastline runs 840 miles from the Oregon border to Mexico, touching the Pacific at every point along the way. That coastline produces some of the finest seafood in the world — Dungeness crab from the cold waters of Northern California, halibut and yellowtail from the warmer southern kelp forests, oysters from the fog-shrouded bays of Marin County. This post follows that coastline from San Diego north to San Francisco, stopping at three restaurants that understand

There is a word for the part of the ocean where light does not reach — where the water is cold and dark and the creatures that live there have adapted to a world without sun. That word is aphotic. It is also the name of a restaurant in San Francisco's Financial District. Aphotic Chef Peter Hemsley, formerly of three-Michelin-star Quince, has built a 13-course tasting menu devoted entirely to what lives in and around the sea. I arrived not knowing quite what to expect from a r

There is no food I judge more harshly than pasta. This is partly because the best version of pasta is so simple — flour, eggs, water, time, technique — that there is nowhere to hide a failure of execution. There are Italian restaurants on virtually every block in San Francisco. Finding one that makes pasta the way pasta deserves to be made requires considerably more work than the proximity suggests. The four restaurants below passed the test. La Ciccia La Ciccia is a Sardin

Welcome to the 100th post. Eighteen months ago, I did not know what this would become — only that I wanted to write about food and travel with honesty, specificity, and the kind of attention that makes a meal worth remembering. One hundred posts later, the blog has taken me to dozens of countries and, more to the point of this particular post, from Diego to the Bay. Thank you to anyone who has read a post, and especially to those who have read many of them. Time is the most v

This restaurant post about Nari is a little different than most in my blog because I was conflicted about writing it. Nari served some of the best Thai food I've ever eaten. It also delivered perhaps the worst restaurant service I've ever experienced. What I am not conflicted about is celebrating the skill of its owner and chef who, prior to and including Nari, has opened some of the best Thai restaurants in the world. Kin Khao, located in San Francisco, California, was ope

There is a version of the holidays that happens on a screen, and a version that happens in a room with other people. I resolved in 2023 to spend more time in the second version. What followed was one of the richest years of live performance I have experienced — from the most beloved musical ever written to a melodrama featuring the Easter Bunny saving Christmas, with an orca pod sighting and a painting class somewhere in between. Les Misérables I will launch this post with Le

Pizza is, depending on your perspective, the most democratic food in the world or the most contested. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a favorite. And the gap between an ordinary pizza and a great one — though both are made from flour, water, yeast, and heat — is wider than most foods allow. California has produced some extraordinary pizza. Here are the restaurants where I have found it. State Flour Pizza Company First on the list is State Flour Pizza Company located in

I love Thai food! Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of eating pad kra poa with my mom, aunt, uncle and cousins at a neighborhood restaurant in Placentia, California or devouring the angel wings at Thai Nakorn in Stanton, California with my dad. I find Thai food distinct in its ability to balance spicy, herbaceous, sweet, creamy, bitter and sour flavors. It wakes up my taste buds in such a unique way. Below are some restaurants that offer a departure from the mor

Sixty miles north of San Francisco on Highway 29, past the Napa Valley welcome sign and through the heart of St. Helena, HALL Winery announces itself before you reach the entrance. The announcement is a 35-foot polished steel rabbit standing on one hind leg in the middle of the vineyard, and it is exactly the right introduction to a winery that understands art and wine not as separate pursuits but as two expressions of the same sensibility. I have been coming here for years.

Not every dim sum experience needs a lazy Susan, a banquet hall, and three generations of family to justify itself. Sometimes you want the har gow warm, the receipt small, and the exit easy. The Bay Area's casual dim sum scene delivers all three — in Oakland's Chinatown, through the Caldecott Tunnel in Walnut Creek, and at a counter-serve institution that has been feeding people out of a plastic bag for decades. These are the spots worth knowing. Ming's Tasty Ming's Tasty Res

There is a particular pleasure in eating well while looking at something beautiful — and California, with 840 miles of coastline, offers more versions of this combination than almost any other state. The restaurants below span the Pacific Highway in Huntington Beach, a harbor in Oceanside, and an Oakland waterfront biergarten. What connects them is the window, the water, and the conviction that food and a view are best experienced together. LSXO On Pacific Coast Highway, in H

The Bay Area has an extraordinary taco culture — shaped by the Mission District's decades-long Mexican culinary tradition, by Oakland's diverse immigrant communities, and by a generation of chefs who have taken the taco's fundamental logic (protein, fat, acid, heat, tortilla) and extended it in every possible direction. From a Michelin-recognized spot in a Hayward strip mall to a shipping container in Oakland with a courtyard full of string lights, here are six Bay Area tacos

Burrata is a fresh, creamy and luscious cheese made from cow's milk. It was first made in the 1920s in the southern Italian Murgia territory, in the outskirts of the city of Andria. Today, you can find it headlining many menus and in grocery stores around the world. At first glance, this plump ball of cheese can be mistaken for mozzarella. The outer layer is springy in texture and thus, quite similar to fresh mozzarella. Burrata means "buttery" in Italian and this cheese i

If you have been following my Greatest Hits series, you know that these are not simply restaurants I enjoyed. They are places that have demonstrated extraordinary quality, remarkable consistency, and enduring excellence over many years. For the second installment in the series, I turn to one of San Francisco's finest ambassadors of Southern Italian cuisine: Most Italian restaurants in America tell you they are authentic. A16 simply is. Named after the autostrada connecting Pu

Discover why Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bistro has become a Napa Valley institution. From exceptional French classics to impeccable service, here's why it's one of California's greatest restaurants.