You’re eyeballing Good Taste, a menu for eating well in the Bay Area. With this week’s launch of the first hydrogen-powered free ferry in San Francisco, there are more reasons than ever to graze through the Ferry Building.
The Ferry Building feels brilliantly fun and alive right now. Flying high inside are colorful banners inspired by the landmark Beaux-Arts building and the city at large, part of a show called Urban Tides: A San Francisco Story that debuted at the Ferry Building on July 12, with more on view at Voss Gallery in the Mission through August 31. The deep and fascinating history of this beloved portal to the Bay is finally being appreciated, as it looks to a sustainable future and continues hosting vital food and community events.
And starting Fri/19, you can travel for free from Pier 41 to the Ferry Building Terminal aboard the MV Sea Change, “the world’s first commercial passenger ferry powered 100% by zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells.”
Representatives for the Ferry Building invited Good Taste to see the show and have a meal at one of the restaurants in the building, so I asked if I could check out Chef Nite Yun’s new Cambodian rice and noodle shop Lunette. I really missed Nyum Bai, Yun’s previous restaurant in Oakland’s Fruitvale Plaza that was a James Beard Awards semifinalist in 2019 and unfortunately closed in 2022. Here she has a bright new space to share her cooking with even more people for a long time to come.
The menu is built around generously portioned rice and noodle dishes (each $21), with side orders of gluten-free fried chicken, cooked seasonal greens and a “funky” cabbage salad with a fish sauce dressing. Some dishes, like the K.T.P.P. (Kuy Teav Phnom Penh), a soup with rice noodles, shrimp, and pork cooked three ways, are familiar from Nyum Bai days, while others such as the Student Noodles, a stir fry of flat pin noodles with a rotation of meat toppings, are new to Lunette.
There’s also a take-home dish called Prahok Ktiss with spicy minced pork belly that’s meant to be eaten with fresh vegetables and rice, but I used it as a dumpling filling to great effect.
If you haven’t been to the Ferry Building in a while, you’ll see a lot of newer businesses there, including Reem’s, Ocean Malasada, Peaches Patties, Señor Sisig and A16’s cafe. This week also brought word of a new tenant in the Ferry Building’s Suite 5, long the home of Charles Phan’s Slanted Door, which drew locals and tourists alike for years before the pandemic.
Phan promised a remodel for a few years, but the space has now been leased out for the next 15 years to Chef Alex Hong from Sorrel. It’s been a pleasure to watch Hong over the years grow from having a pop-up concept to an acclaimed restaurant and now this even bigger project, which is unnamed at the moment and is expected to open next year. And it feels good to see the mix in the current generation of businesses that are open in the Ferry Building and have hope that they’ll all thrive.
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