Top Splurge Restaurants in the Bay Area

French native Dominique Crenn’s flagship restaurant embraces a joyful narrative culinary style: Diners are given poems with their meals, with each line corresponding to dishes from the 14-course pescatarian tasting menu ($410). Ingredients from the restaurant’s Sonoma County farm are prepared with precision in dishes like a delicate tart with koji rice cream and sturgeon caviar; spot prawn essence condensed into a shockingly muscular shot of broth; and clever desserts by pastry chef Juan Contreras. The restaurant is an extension of Crenn’s social work as well: It’s certified plastic-free and supports food insecurity work in the San Francisco community.

Also featured on Top San Francisco Restaurants .

The tasting menu ($288) at San Francisco’s Avery is one of the hidden gems of the city’s dining scene. At this minuscule restaurant on Fillmore Street, chef and owner Rodney Wages and his skeleton crew serve exquisite and imaginative haute cuisine: tortellini as delicate as cats’ ears; Harbison cheese tarts; and miniature Toaster Strudels with lingonberries. Japanese culinary touches manifest subtly, as tempura-fried nettle leaves, a takoyaki-like oyster “aebleskiver,” and silken chawanmushi with umami-rich abalone. While sake is a particular focus of the beverage program, the nonalcoholic drink pairing is full of surprises, like a drink of fermented pineapple with sauerkraut essence that goes great with cured Iberico ham.

For a glimpse of the sublime, go to Benu. Precision seems to be the reigning virtue of this kitchen, manifesting as a rainbow of vegetables sequestered inside fingerprint-size mussels, tendrils of carefully sliced tofu floating in a clear broth and delicate morsels of jellyfish-wrapped prawns. While modern in presentation, the cuisine here nevertheless relies on old-style techniques, like fermentation in Korean earthenware and the Hunanese tradition of curing century eggs. Opened in 2010 by fine dining veteran Corey Lee, the restaurant earned three Michelin stars in 2014 — a first for a San Francisco establishment. The eight-course tasting menu ($375, plus 20% gratuity) can accommodate a variety of dietary needs.

Californios adds a distinctly Latin American set of flavors to the local fine dining scene. Chef and owner Val Cantu turns seasonal produce and heirloom corn varietals into refined but cozily familiar dishes like stone fruit ceviche and chile-spiced squab tacos. That approach makes Cantu’s lengthy, multicourse menu ($287-$307) one of the most unique fine dining splurges you can find on this side of the border. The modern, darkly painted space, designed by co-owner Carolyn Cantu, sparks contemplation as you soak it all in. Beverage pairings ($197), smartly chosen by sommelier-owner Charlotte Randolph, elevate the meals.

This is Oakland's premier tasting-menu ($225) restaurant, where diners can dig into more than a dozen technically refined dishes in a sleek dining room with an open kitchen. Executive chef and owner James Syhabout has allowed the fine dining restaurant to evolve over its lifetime, going from intricate, classically European-style cuisine to a menu with subtle Southeast Asian touches. The menu takes some fascinating turns: A raw oyster shimmering with vivid green pea-leaf ice might be followed by silky brown rice congee enriched with duck fat. The walk-in bar has a separate menu that’s just as thrilling, including Syhabout’s famous slow-poached egg yolk ($13) with smoked dates, alliums and malt, and bar-only originals like a petite Korean-style savory pancake with sweet Oregon pink shrimp and summer corn.

Also featured on Top 25 Restaurants and Top East Bay Restaurants .

After going dark for 10 years, the formerly two-Michelin-starred Cyrus has reopened in a brand-new space in Geyserville. Led by chef-owner Douglas Keane, the restaurant, housed in a former prune packing plant, has the feel of a cocktail party, where wandering from room to room is an integral part of the experience. Each seating consists of a dozen diners who start with canapés in the lounge, then move on to more substantial courses in the open kitchen and dining room. Finally, your party is whisked away to the “dessert room” to gaze upon a chocolate waterfall and listen to the “Willy Wonka” soundtrack while nibbling on cream puffs and truffles. You can choose the 14-course tasting menu ($295) or simply pop into the lounge for cocktails and a la carte snacks.

Like its sister restaurant Utzutzu in Alameda, Delage departs from the typical omakase-style sushi bar by embracing local, seasonal produce. Chef Mikiko Ando integrates ingredients like height-of-summer corn and tomatoes into her eight-course omakase ($100), presenting them with reverence usually reserved for the rarest imported delicacies. A dumpling course includes a purple sweet potato wonton topped with a dark tapioca chip reminiscent of fried fish skin, and juicy slabs of watermelon are served as carpaccio on a dish of translucent crystal. The climax is a chirashi duo of pristine fish, rich with umami and served in delicate blue glass bowls.

Hina Yakitori’s counter in NoPa is open after a long hiatus, with a 21-course tasting menu ($165) featuring pasture-raised chicken grilled over imported Japanese coals. Led by chef Tommy Cleary, the team works at a brisk cadence to expertly grill, baste and garnish your skewers in a dance that’s fascinating to watch from the counter. Seemingly humble skewers are garnished with not-so-humble accouterments, like Tsar Nicoulai caviar, finger lime pulp, cured jidori egg yolks and smoked fish shredded right before your eyes.

Also featured on Top Japanese Restaurants .

During the early days of the pandemic, ramen shop owner Yuko Nammo brought her husband, chef Shinichi Aoki, into the kitchen while the Michelin-starred restaurant he worked at reduced its hours. Both have backgrounds in traditional kaiseki-style cooking, the Japanese haute cuisine, and their experience and comfort with the genre are in full view at the restaurant. The $230/person menu showcases a variety of techniques and seasonal ingredients in its multicourse progression, including golden-eyed snapper simmered in soup with winter melon and makrut lime, tender barbecued eel with soft scrambled eggs, and tomato gelee with fava beans.

Also featured on Top Japanese Restaurants .

Once the hottest pop-up in town, this Mission District fine dining restaurant is known for its super-seasonal tasting menu ($275-295/person) and cozy lumberjack-chic vibes. Part of the restaurant's charm lies in how it plays with nostalgia. You might find that feeling in the opening shot of herbal tisane, served in a glass teapot that looks like something out of a fairytale; in tempura-fried soft shell crab dusted with the restaurant's own, localized blend of Old Bay-like spices; or in a mignardise plate's gummi bear, explosive with concentrated passionfruit flavor.

Also featured on Top San Francisco Restaurants .

For a classic fine dining experience, try Le Papillon, which has entranced San Jose diners with its haute cuisine since 1977. The dining room is on the quieter side but the staff is congenial and kind, making this an excellent option for special occasions and fancy dates. The cuisine has strong French roots and global influences that chef Scott Cooper credits to his travels around the world. You can try one of two dining styles here: the six-course tasting ($165), which tends to start with seafood before moving to interesting meat courses like pheasant breast and deer loin with huckleberry sauce; or the three- or four-course prix fixe ($105/$125), which you can customize from a seasonal menu.

Also featured on Top San Jose Restaurants .

Chef and owner Ron Siegel’s 10-course tasting menus ($125) change often: You might find a strip of horse mackerel flesh served with a soulful dashi broth; summer-y corn tortellini with black truffle; or a sigh-inducing pistachio, nectarine and avocado salad. Each course is served on carefully considered ceramic tableware — sometimes hefty and plain, sometimes speckled in varying blues like the iris of an eye. If you’ve been eating a lot of takeout this year, come to see the pros show you just how gorgeous restaurant food on a real plate can be.

Also featured on Top Marin County Restaurants .

One of the most extra dining experiences in the Bay Area, 3-year-old Merchant Roots has a penchant for the theatrical. Led by chef Chris King, the S.F. restaurant adapts influences as broad as “Alice in Wonderland” and “elements and celestial bodies of the universe,” changing its decor and menus to suit the material: A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party event might include a cheese course served on a mouse trap and charcuterie served in miniature picnic baskets. The current iteration is a multicourse menu ($168) of food for mermaids, which features sustainable seafood and seaweed grown specifically for the restaurant.

In a Vallejo shopping center with hardly any signage, Ali and Michael Warring work together to produce a thrilling New American tasting menu experience, which comes in a seven-course ($84) or, on Thursdays and Fridays, 12-course ($124) format. The open kitchen setting is intimate, with just a counter and a few tables in the dining room, and the couple offer a personable level of service that fits the restaurant’s small scale. The menu changes frequently to match the season, and Warring doesn’t hesitate to include French, Korean, Spanish and other touches to the table. You may see heirloom tomato sorbet crowned with chilled sabayon in August, or tart strawberry kimchi with peppery nasturtium flowers in June. Look forward to beignets, prepared with potent components like sea urchin creme fraiche or peanut butter cup-flavor ice cream. Cheese courses are served on rustic platters that are little more than rough slabs of clay, lending a primal effect.

Nightbird, a restaurant defined by its bespoke elements, is one of the highlights of Hayes Valley’s crowded dining scene. Chef Kim Alter’s impressive “five course and five bite” tasting menu ($185) is a showcase of local ingredients that have captured her attention: Flannery beef from San Rafael, peppery honey and beeswax from Mission District hives, and foraged kelps and ice plants. Custom dishware from local ceramists, some looking like jagged oyster shells or jewelry pillows, give the experience more gravitas. For a more casual experience, walk into the Linden Room, the restaurant’s adjoining craft cocktail bar.

In a corner space in San Francisco’s Richmond District, married couple Yoko and Clint Tan have worked tirelessly to bring their dream of top-quality ramen into reality. The noodles are the centerpiece of a fascinating tasting menu experience ($175) that walks the diner through the flavors of modern Japanese cuisine. You’ll find the noodles served in different forms depending on the type of soup (or lack thereof): as ebi shio, in a translucent salt-seasoned broth paired with spot prawns and meaty New Caledonian blue shrimp; or tossed with rich Wagyu beef fat in an indulgent take on abura soba. It’s been a long journey for the self-taught chefs, who made a name for themselves by hosting pop-ups on Feastly and even competing in a global ramen competition. This restaurant is a culmination of all that effort, and the Tans’ enthusiasm is palpable in every course.

Also featured on Top 25 Restaurants .

The jewel in the crown of San Francisco restaurateurs Lindsay and Michael Tusk, Quince epitomizes the appeal of fine dining. The dining room, designed by Lindsay Tusk, balances low- and high-brow elements like Venetian chandeliers and exposed brick walls; and in a similar vein, the front-of-house staff deftly toe the line between anticipating all of your needs while being exceedingly human about it. Michael Tusk’s 8 to 10-course tasting menu ($360) changes daily, its contents intimately tied to whatever’s popping at Fresh Run Farm, the restaurant group’s produce source in Bolinas. You might be presented with a baked Kumamoto oyster draped with pureed nettles, tender tortellini lined up on a bridge-like corn rib, or sweet morsels of lobster wrapped in veiny savoy cabbage leaves in a dim sum steamer. Dinner culminates in an awe-inspiring dessert cart abundant with pâtes de fruits, truffles, caneles and more — and yes, you can take as much as you want.

In the open kitchen of San Francisco’s Saison, bundles of herbs hang from ceiling-mounted racks and sparks fly as the cooks stoke the grand wood-fired grill. Around the dining room, mounted antelope and deer heads, seemingly frozen mid-bleat, preside over the scene. Saison’s hunting lodge-chic aesthetic and its pursuit of a more combustive take on California cuisine immediately distinguished it in cosmopolitan San Francisco when it opened in 2008, and the menu continues to impress under the leadership of chef de cuisine Richard Lee. The food here is showy, but just-so: caviar is unwrapped table side from a pouch of kelp; tea is steeped with floral bouquets fit for a fairy’s wedding; and smoke-kissed duck hearts are theatrically skewered on twigs of pine. The full tasting menu is $328, while the abridged version is $228.

Also featured on Top 25 Restaurants .

The debut restaurant of young sushi chef Ingi Son, the Shota is a jewel box of a sushi bar in San Francisco’s Financial District. Attentive service is the main attraction here: The chefs behind the counter are personable and chatty, eager to answer any questions you might have about the fish. The 15-course omakase ($295) leans heavily on classically prepared Edomae sushi, but there are some fun surprises mixed in, like an oceanic sea urchin pate and grilled mushrooms with crunchy toasted quinoa and black cod. Beverage pairings, by general manager Shar Guillermo, are presented in gorgeous and vibrantly colored artisan-made glassware.

Also featured on Top Sushi Restaurants .

There is no SingleThread restaurant without its farm, and vice versa. Conceived in tandem by farmer-and-chef couple Katina and Kyle Connaughton, SingleThread’s twin operations have made it into a culinary powerhouse. At the Healdsburg restaurant, the farm’s incredibly fresh produce is the basis for an acrobatic 10-course tasting menu ($425) centered on Japanese techniques. The iconic first course is a sculptural platter of small plates — raw oysters, sashimi, caviar panna cotta and more — arranged around dewy leaves and sprouts from the farm. Other courses may include silken house-made tofu ladled out with a mushroom tea, and ice cream made of walnut miso served with earthy hojicha cake and a drizzle of nocino.

In an oasis of a space just off San Mateo's downtown strip is an Edomae-style sushi bar that serves a jaw-dropping variety of premium cured, smoked, aged and simmered fish and seafood. Letting chef Akira Yoshizumi take the reins is like reading a picaresque novel, each bite a new and surprising vignette. His old-school style of omakase ($295) is an exercise in simplicity: just rice, fish and fresh wasabi, in dazzling combinations. The chef regularly imports his fish and seafood directly from Tokyo's Toyosu fish market, and he preserves its quality by getting out of the way.

Also featured on Top Sushi Restaurants and Top Peninsula and South Bay Restaurants .