San Francisco's Restaurant Scene
San Francisco's Restaurant Scene
FOUND SF shares the inside scoop on hospitality life in the City by the Bay
Our friends at FOUND — purveyors of quality recommendations and actionable intel about restaurants, getaways, shopping, real estate, culture and work — recently launched in San Francisco. New issues land on Wednesdays. Subscribe at FOUND SF. (See also Miami, New York City, and Los Angeles.) Here’s a taste of their recent restaurant coverage:
Making the Dough with Ryan Pollnow, co-executive chef & partner, Flour + Water Hospitality Group
Neighborhood you live in: Haight-Ashbury
It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I rotate between the restaurants in our group (Flour + Water, Penny Roma, and Flour + Water Pizzeria). On one of my Pizzeria days, I head to North Beach from my place near Golden Gate Park. The first thing I do after turning the lights on is turn on music, to set the tone for the day. Today, I start with Bad Bunny, an artist the entire team agrees on. There's dough being mixed, and I'm tackling portioning and balling 500 pizza doughs for lunch and dinner service alongside our prep team. Deliveries are starting to arrive. Our CDC, Elliott, is working on the slice of the day.
I'm in charge of making family meal — today's is mapo tofu, so we'll use our pizza sausage in the base. I'll throw our first round of meatballs into the oven, put rice on the stove, and set a timer for both. It's now 10:30 a.m., an hour ’til opening, so we're conducting our line check (checking quantities and tastes of the mise en place at each station) and throwing our first tester pie into the oven. We're happy with the tester, but the dough didn't get quite as much rise as we want, so we'll change the proof setting to ensure that it's ready for our first guests.
What’s on the agenda for today?
Flour + Water is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month and we’re offering a "Greatest Hits" pasta tasting menu featuring favorites from our past throughout the month. After lunch, I’m checking in on that. Our weekly manager meeting is from 3 to 4 p.m. this afternoon, and I've got a chef's financial training for my sous chef right before. We're on the eighth round of testing for our GF pizza dough — so far we've been semi-happy with the results, but we want to make sure it has the same quality and integrity as our standard dough program, so we'll continue testing. My partner Sophie is tasting at Golden Sardine so I sneak out of the pizzeria at 8 p.m. to meet her for a glass of wine before popping over to Hilda & Jesse for dinner. We take the dog for a walk and fall asleep to reruns of Top Chef.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, or this weekend?
I'm stoked to check out Four Kings in Chinatown, a new hot new Cantonese restaurant run by some talented Mister Jiu's alumni. We'll hit Moongate Lounge for a drink (and who are we kidding, probably a snack) before dinner. I've got the weekend off so I'll sleep in and hit Breadbelly on the way out of the city to go hiking up north around Mt. Tam.
How about a little leisure or culture?
I'm looking forward to getting back to the bocce court at Golden Gate Park across the street from my house. My friends and I always put together an epic spread of snacks and plenty of sparkling wine.
Any weekend getaways?
This weekend I'm going to Tahoe for some end-of-the-season snowboarding, and I plan to check out Tangerine, a new restaurant in Truckee run by one of our former Flour + Water chefs and owned by one of my business partners in FWHG. On the way up I'm obviously getting In-N-Out. I'll snowboard at Palisades, return late Sunday night, order Burmese food, and fall asleep to more Top Chef reruns.
What was your last great vacation?
Last October I took a trip to Alto Adige and the Veneto and spent time hiking around the Dolomites, discovering the lesser-known pastas of the region. I was so inspired by the food that we hosted an 'Alpine Wine Dinner' at Penny Roma this April to share some of my favorite dishes from that trip.
Alpinn, El Brite de Larieto, and Finstewirt from the surrounding areas were all restaurant highlights for me. Alpinn showcased creative modern Alpine cuisine with absolutely breathtaking views. El Brite de Larieto is agroturismo at its best — farmstead cheeses produced on site and simple, rustic fare that changes daily. Finstewirt had a classic elegant setting with refined (but traditional) cooking techniques and presentations. One of my favorite discoveries from that trip was My Arbor, what they call a 'wellness hotel'. I was living my best Alpine life, using their sauna twice a day.
RESTAURANTS: First Person
Neo-Victorian
I squeezed into the buzzy new Bar Jabroni on a drizzly Thursday night, hoping the hype had died down, or at least been temporarily dampened. No such luck. Grabbing a glass of cremant at the bar, I ran into a handful of food media types, a restaurant publicist, and my hair stylist — all within 10 minutes.
Hoagie fans have dearly loved Palm City Wines since 2020, and apparently everyone you’ve ever known is excited for the follow-up, Bar Jabroni, which opened in the Lower Haight in March. While Palm City is more of a wine shop with sandwiches, Bar Jabroni is a full-service experience, with its plates both small and large.
Since it’s owned by a couple of wine pros — husband Dennis Cantwell was Nopa’s wine director, while wife Monica Wong worked up front at A16 and Bar Agricole — that chilled house red “Vini Jabroni” from Mendocino is super fresh and crushable. For the food, they tapped Chef Robert Hernandez, previously at Octavia. He’s rising to the occasion with dishes like a flaky green garlic pancake dunked in whipped feta, charred cabbage sunk in black garlic ranch, and ultra rich braised wagyu beef cheeks.
Bar Jabroni occupies a sweet corner space on the ground floor of a Victorian which has been repainted a wild canary yellow, in quintessential San Francisco style. The bar runs down the left, several high tops sit to the right, and of course, the most coveted seats are at the front, a couple of tables in the big windows. Don’t miss the fun art toward the back, including the Dude from The Big Lebowski, abiding in the bathroom.
If you can’t score a reservation, that’s fine — they take walk-ins, but there will be a wait for a table. Lucky for you, there might be no better place right now to drink in the scene and a glass of wine. –Becky Duffett
→ Bar Jabroni (Lower Haight) • 698 Haight St • Tues-Sat 5-11p • Reserve.
Multi Coastal with Michael Mina, chef and founder of MINA Group
Neighborhood you work in: Various
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
On any given Tuesday, I could be anywhere in the world these days. This week, I’m in New York City working on our new restaurant, Bourbon Steak (at the JW Marriott Essex House). I meet with my culinary and operations leaders each morning to review business across all our restaurants. It’s important that we have a regular cadence of connecting as we can be spread across the country — or globe — at times, so this ensures we’re always connected. When I’m not on the road, I start my morning working from home in Las Vegas.
What’s on the agenda for today?
Today, it’s all about working with our team at Bourbon Steak. After weeks of training and practice meals, we’re finally ready to welcome guests. This is our first Mina Group restaurant in New York, and since I went to culinary school here and started my professional career here, this is a huge moment. I love the energy of openings, and that, mixed with the pace of New York, is exhilarating. It’s also been great to connect with chefs and other friends in the city. New York has always been a playground for me, and now I get to invite people in to dine at my restaurant — what a special moment!
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
The list of restaurants I plan to visit in NYC is long. There’s always something new, and yet, I also like to visit friends and some of my favorite spots. Coming up this weekend, I’m planning to go to Le Bernardin, Le Pavillon, Cote, and Marea.
When I’m in San Francisco, I’m partial to:
La Taqueria in the Mission District: A San Francisco institution since the ’70s. It is no frills, the place is always packed, and the food is excellent.
R&G Lounge: There are always people waiting outside of R&G Lounge. They have all kinds of crab dishes, but the salt and pepper Dungeness crab is the best.
Tadich Grill: The oldest restaurant in California is located on the cable car lines, so if you’re visiting from out of town, the visuals and sound of the cable cars going by make for a true San Francisco experience.
Bourbon and Branch: A speakeasy-style bar that’s very unassuming from the outside, but the experience inside is like you’ve stepped back in time to the 1902s — dark, swanky, and with great cocktails.
How about a little leisure or culture?
I’m a big sports fan — specifically, San Francisco teams — but since I’ve been spending so much time this spring in New York, I’ve enjoyed going to Yankee Stadium. I was even able to celebrate my son’s birthday with him at a game earlier this month. My two sons are now out of college, so any time I can spend with them is cherished.
Any weekend getaways?
Living in Las Vegas, my favorite weekend getaway is riding my dirt bike to Red Rock Canyon.
What was your last great vacation?
Any chance I get to take a vacation, it’s always to Hawaii with my family. I’ve been traveling to Hawaii for years, and even if it’s for work (I have two restaurants in Hawaii, Mina’s Fish House, and StripSteak), I feel immediately relaxed the moment I step on the island. My favorite thing to do while I’m there is go fishing, and my spot is a sandbar in Kaneohe on Oahu.
Restaurants: FOUND Table
Bar Sprezzatura in Bloom
With a dining room of colorful banquettes, towering globe lamps, and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto Jackson Square’s skyscrapers, Bar Sprezzatura doesn’t feel like any other restaurant in San Francisco. Just getting here is an act of discovery: The entrance is tucked away at the end of a long garden terrace on the second floor of One Maritime Plaza.
Clearly, the secret’s out. At 5:30 p.m. on a recent Thursday, the wait for a table at the (year-old) restaurant stretched past the two-hour mark. The bar was also packed, but thankfully, it didn’t take long for two seats to shake loose. And really, the bar’s where you want to be, as it’s where co-owner Carlo Splendorini runs the show. A veteran of Michael Mina’s restaurant group, Splendorini is both skilled barman and great host, welcoming guests with gratis prosecco, fielding questions about the menu, and making plates disappear as soon as they’re empty.
Carlo’s cocktail list at Bar Sprezz — a place so good it’s already earned a nickname — is a mix of Italian classics and quirkier creations, including a $50 “vintage” Negroni and a martini made with white-truffle-infused vodka and truffle-stuffed olives. The big hit on my visit (and the drink seemingly on every table) was the “I Bought Myself Flowers,” a citrusy, gin-based concoction with mauve-colored foam. This is a strong contender for Drink of the Spring (possibly Drink of the Summer, too).
Dinner features an array of Italian small plates and a few pastas and entrees. The spring vegetable agnolotti, tuna carpaccio with preserved tomatoes, and stracciatella with pistachios were all light, bright, and pretty. But it was two heartier, monochromatic dishes that really blew us away: whipped salt cod on toast, and guanciale meatballs in a dark red ragu. It’s a unique thrill, enjoying the rustic flavors of Italian home-cooking in such a glamorous setting. –Greg Morabito
Bar Sprezzatura (Fidi), One Maritime Plaza, Mon-Wed 11a-9p, Thu-Fri 11a-10p Reserve.