Good Taste: The Best Deals from SF Restaurant Week

Good Taste helps you eat well in the Bay Area. This week we present our selection of the most attractive brunch, lunch and dinner offers SF Restaurant Week (Fri./November 8-17).

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association's SF Restaurant Week is an ambitious effort in which 203 restaurants offer exclusive prix-fixe meals at special prices. It has grown significantly over the years and has 33 new participants in 2024. Brunch and lunch with two or more courses are available for $10, $15, $25, $35 and $45. Three or more course dinners are $30, $45, $60, $75 and $90. Taxes and tips are not included. Most participating restaurants are located in San Francisco, but there are also some restaurants in other parts of the Bay Area.

I searched the SF Restaurant Week website to make recommendations for each price point, but some participants have not posted their menus online as of this writing.

Brunch/lunch

$10

There may be more $10 deals, but only one has been released so far: a selection of three 10-inch pizzas with a drink for lunch at Valencia Pizza & Pasta (801 Valencia Street). Unlike the other choices featured here, I haven't personally tried this place, but they're a perennial favorite of 48 Hills editors.

$15

Chef Dontaye Ball's Gumbo Social (5176 Third Street) offers the best value lunch for $15: eight ounces of gumbo (vegan, smoked turkey, or chicken and sausage), half of a giant po' boy sandwich (jackfruit, shrimp, shredded pork, or Sausage). ) and half an order of Cajun fries. The best free hot sauce bar in town is a bonus for visiting the restaurant, which opened in June 2023. Nobody touches this offer!

$25

Early To Rise (1801 McAllister Street) is a brunch restaurant that opened in February and cooks everything from scratch. Their $25 brunch deal includes a warm sugar donut and coffee, plus a choice of Eggs Benedict with house-smoked Canadian bacon (or spinach) and the best grits in town, or Strawberry Pancakes with macerated strawberries, crème fraïche, strawberry-maple syrup, pistachio-hazelnut -Brittle and chocolate mint.

$35

A few weeks ago, I was invited to brunch at chef Carlos Altamirano's newest Peruvian-California restaurant, the not-quite-two-month-old Altamirano (1775 Fulton Street), and was particularly impressed by the bold flavors of the Charlie Cheeseburger. with grass-fed beef, pepper jack cheese, caramelized onions and roasted chili rocoto aioli. Normally it costs $26 on its own, but appears as an entree on the brunch menu the next two weekends for $35. The meal also includes a mimosa and a choice of two desserts (Chicha Brulée or Algorrobo crumb cheesecake). There are several great $35 brunch and lunch deals available during SF Restaurant Week; It may be the best category to browse on the SF Restaurant Week website, but this is the one that really stands out to me based on my recent experiences.

$45

Also available only on the two Saturdays and Sundays of SF Restaurant Week, Abacá (2700 Jones Street) offers the standout brunch offering for $45, with a sarap tasting of buttered pandesal rolls, spreads, oysters, amberjack, Sarciado and Lumpia and a choice of Lechon Pork Belly Arroz Caldo, Chicken Tocino Silog or Fall Crepe, with additional appetizers and desserts (pro tip: never skip dessert here). I wish I could eat it while I write; The Filipino restaurant at the Kimpton Alton Hotel in Fisherman's Wharf is my personal favorite.

Dinner

$30

Fiery Hot Pot and Grill (2333 Irving Street), one of Irving's relatively new restaurants in the Outer Sunset, offers a lobster and meat hot pot set or a lobster tail KBBQ set with tabletop banchan or vegetables and rice for dessert a smooth $30. Hot Pot can easily cost over $50 without even batting an eyelid, so this could be a good deal for fans of these community formats.

$45

The legendary Zen vegetarian restaurant Greens (Building A, 2 Marina Boulevard) has always been relatively expensive, which makes its $45 dinner prix fixe for SF Restaurant Week a good time to try it out. There are three courses (arugula salad, pumpkin lasagna or Tassajara wild mushroom terrine and Meyer lemon cake) as well as an amuse bouche, a potato croquette with crème fraïche and seaweed caviar. And it feels so good to sit in this room and look out at the water at Fort Mason.

$60

The SF Restaurant Week website incorrectly lists the dinner special at Richmond District Vietnamese hotspot Lily (225 Clement Street) costs $75. However, when you click on the menu it shows that the three-course prix fixe (with optional add-ons) is $60. Choose between a Vietnamese beef carpaccio, a smoked salmon and strawberry roll or a jackfruit pizza (the latter is a must in my opinion). Everyone gets beef pho as an appetizer and a choice of seven entrees, including curried mussels, a pork chop plate with broken rice, a shake beef tenderloin salad, and a personal obsession: turmeric catfish. I would eat here every week if money were no object.

$75

As we approach the top two price tiers, I'm eager to be blown away with a $75 dinner, and I also know from recent experience that the $75 family-style tasting menu at Chef Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz's Dalida (101 Montgomery Street , Suite 100) can do this as it is generally part of their regular offering at the same price. The special version for SF Restaurant Week includes five courses, some with multiple components: a snack platter of mussel dolma, nixtamalized butternut squash with goat cheese and Fort Bragg cod kin with taramosalata; Breads and spreads, a real highlight of the Mediterranean restaurant since it opened in June 2023; Kakavia with octopus and cod, a dumpling dish in broth; Berkshire pork neck souvlaki with Shasta County porcini mushrooms, crispy saffron rice and barberries; and phyllo cake with bay leaf-orange syrup and kaymak ice cream. Definitely dreamy!

$90

I think chef Tracy Goh's delightful Malaysian restaurant Damansara (1781 Church Street) is the $90 dinner winner here, with two different Dungeness crab combinations that can feed two people. One is a whole crab with a choice of black pepper sauce, chili sauce with tamarind and fermented soybean sauce or salted egg and cream granola sauce (my favorite), served with crab butter baked rice with crab meat and fried mantou rolls and an option of 20% off Receive a discount on selected drinks. The other is a crab-heavy cioppino with king prawns, clams, calamari and fish cake (with baked rice and mantou), a specialty that's not normally available but sounds incredible.

Tamara publishes the California food Website, newsletter and zine.