Please add new discoveries and let us know if anything has been mis-characterized, especially if a place’s menu doesn’t reflect the purported region. The San Francisco Bay Area Cantonese Primer is a quick primer to get you started down that route. Some Cantonese sub-categories are included, but let’s focus on Cantonese (i.e., Guangdong) and Hong Kong in other posts since they form the foundation of the Bay Area’s Chinese cuisine, and have lots of specialty shops worthy of their own discussions (e.g., dim sum, desserts, meats, etc.). Also check out Clarissa Wei’s regional Chinese guide to LA and Jim Thurman’s Essential Guide to Regional Chinese Food in LA. For specific dishes, I recommend looking through Carolyn Phillips’ website and book on regional Chinese cuisine, All Under Heaven. For a curated analogue of the guide, consider the San Francisco Chronicle’s James Beard Award winning Many Chinas, Many Tables project, which used this list to identify candidate restaurants, and which contains short descriptions and dish recommendations for dozens of restaurants.įor additional background on cuisines, the Modern Chinese Foodways conference has a bountiful resources page. I’ve also included links to Chowhound discussions and journalist reviews, and each restaurant is linked to Yelp for address and location info.
For a more in-depth discussion of a restaurant or regional cuisine, and to help separate restaurant specialties from fool’s gold, check out linked discussions on Hungry Onion or start a new discussion to get the ball rolling.
Treat these categories as rough guidance, and be warned the list includes outstanding restaurants and real stinkers.
Regions of course don’t live in a vacuum, and a chef’s pedigree (or menu) says nothing of their skills at making regional dishes. The list is a superficial treatment, but it will point you to over 400 restaurants whose specialties fall outside the general Cantonese or Chinese American umbrellas. To help make sense of the diversity of Chinese cuisine available in the Bay Area, this project aims to document restaurants that specialize in a regional, or ethnic-based, Chinese sub-cuisine, or at least have uncommon regional dishes. You could eat at Bay Area Chinese restaurants every night for a month, devoting each meal to a different region of China, ethnic group, or international community, and never repeat a restaurant or style. Health experts consider dining out to be a high-risk activity for the unvaccinated it may pose a risk for the vaccinated, especially in areas with substantial COVID transmission.Since the 1960s, the Bay Area’s repertoire of Chinese dishes has continued to expand beyond its Cantonese roots.
To that end, we’ve added San Ho Won, Abaca, Nisei, and Flour + Water the still-excellent Monsieur Benjamin, Farmhouse Kitchen Thai Cuisine, Montesacro, and Cotogna have been removed for now. Sometimes a still great restaurant makes way for another one, in order to keep things new and fresh - and, importantly, to make sure that the Eater 38 is an inclusive and representative list.
These are the places you don’t want to miss on your first trip to the Bay Area, and the ones worth returning to even if you’ve lived here for decades.Īnd because we want to make sure this list reflects the ever-changing nature of San Francisco’s vibrant dining scene, we update the Eater 38 on a quarterly basis, adding restaurants that were previously overlooked, are newly eligible (Eater 38 restaurants must have been open for six months), or have stepped up their game. It’s a list that tells the story of San Francisco through food, documenting the blend of taquerias, dumpling shops, and tasting menu destinations that make this city one of the most interesting places to eat in America. The Eater 38 is our attempt to answer any question that begins, “Can you recommend a restaurant?” It’s a curated list that covers the entire city, spanning numerous cuisines, neighborhoods, and price points.