By Mario Cortez, Food Reporter May 27, 2024
What makes a restaurant a lifelong fixture for customers? Is it consistently great dinners? Is it the ambiance? Or just plain nostalgia?
The storied Tadich Grill has been a go-to for generations of San Franciscans. But when Chronicle restaurant critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan decided to review the city’s oldest restaurant, she found that it has coasted on its fame and treats customers with contempt. After publishing that review last week, she followed it up with a look at another courtly San Francisco institution: Scoma’s in Fisherman’s Wharf. To Fegan, Scoma’s was proof that a restaurant can maintain tradition while staying relevant.
Knowing readers would have thoughts on the subject, the Chronicle asked readers: Is there a restaurant you keep going to, no matter what?
By Friday afternoon, roughly 150 readers had responded to the poll, sharing their favorite local stalwarts. Several restaurants got multiple mentions, such as Jackson Square’s Bix, perennially popular Foreign Cinema in the Mission and the rowdy Tommy’s Joynt in the Cathedral Hill area. But there were clear favorites among readers.
Here are the top six restaurants, in descending order, that Chronicle readers swear loyalty to.
The classic S.F. restaurants that Chronicle readers will never stop going back to
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