Hayes Valley, San Francisco · restaurant
The dining room is warm and unhurried—intimate without feeling precious—and the menu has been quietly setting the standard for California cooking for more than a decade. The sardine chips—potato chips skewered with whole sardines and horseradish crème fraîche—are the signature order, followed by porcini doughnuts with raclette dipping sauce, aged beef dumplings with chili crunch, and whatever the season has to offer.