10 Places to Eat at Now

Ajanta - I love when you walk into a restaurant and the smell is the first thing you notice (well, in a good way), swiftly followed by a pang of hunger. Ajanta, with its lightly spiced aromas coming from the kitchen, is...

Atelier Crenn - A friend and I were recently talking about Patti Smith, and poetry, and how fewer people seem to groove on poetry these days. Sometimes you stumble across a piece that will really resonate with you and give you pause, from...

Boxing Room - It’s a hard job to name restaurants. Some places nail it from the beginning (Bix, Frances, Canteen), while others seem to grow into their names with time (nopa, Cotogna, Serpentine). I’m not quite sure I see that strong a connection...

Cotogna - Oh yes, let’s just throw another log on ye olde hype fire, shall we? There has been citywide dismay at how hard it is to secure a reservation at the at-capacity Cotogna, and I could practically write the starlet section...

ICHI Sushi - I’ll be honest—every time I hear about yet another crappy little sushi place opening in the city, I want to say a prayer for all the unagi, hamachi, ebi, toro (did you really just offer me that? Criminy.), and other...

Locanda - So I’m riding my bike down Valencia Street around 5:15pm, and wow, look at that line of people snaking down the street. Everyone is far too snazzily dressed for it to be a soup kitchen queue. As I get closer,...

Mission Chinese Food - Excuse me, what? My eyes are tearing up so much that I can’t hear you. No, I don’t know why that is happening. All I know is I can’t get enough of the tingling sensations I get every time I...

Piccino - Well then, look who’s all grown up now? Sheryl Rogat and Margherita Stewart-Sagan’s Piccino has definitely come a long way (baby), from their tiny corner space that used to be just down the street, where they were cooking everything out...

Ragazza - I just finished eating a lunch of leftover wild nettle pizza from Ragazza, and in the words of James Brown, I jumped back and wanted to kiss myself. I mean, really, are there two finer words in succession than “leftover...

Wing Wings - The art of the fryer. Some people have it. And one of those people is Christian Ciscle, who gained legions of fans for his fried chicken while he was doing damage to our arteries at Little Skillet in SoMa. Now...