Good Taste is a menu for eating well in the Bay Area. This week, it’s home to a gift guide for the food-enthused (or obsessed) members of your family or crew.
Cookbooks
After launching a Food Book Club earlier this year, I’ve been especially attentive to cookbooks that have come out in 2025, and must say that we had a banner publishing year here in the Bay Area.
These four titles in particular would make for terrific gifts for those who cook or just love to have a great cookbook on their coffee table: House of Nanking by Kathy and Peter Fang, which reveals cooking secrets and family stories about building a business in San Francisco’s Chinatown; Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes by Ying Chang Compestine, a combo of graphic novel and cookbook by the author of an outstanding 27 books; Backyard BBQ with Fire & Spice by Tony Ramirez, a TikTok star who has mastered Filipino-Cajun cooking; and Coastal by Half Moon Bay restaurateur Scott Clark (Dad’s Luncheonette) with Betsy Andrews, a beautifully shot road trip down Highway 1 with picturesque snacks.
These are all available at SF’s Omnivore Books on Food (and other independent bookstores).
Classes
Lots of people would love to be gifted a cooking class since it’s a little bit of a luxury. A tax-deductable gift card to 18 Reasons, the nonprofit cooking school in the Mission, helps fund the org’s free community events. It works for both online and in-person cooking classes, so the recipient doesn’t necessarily need to live nearby. Gift cards for classes are also available at the cooking school at Cavallo Point and at BiteUnite.
Fruit delivery
Forget the fruitcake this year—the local weekly fruit delivery service Fruitqueen offers gift cards that recipients can use to order mixed seasonal fruit boxes, cases of tropical fruit, and rare varieties of fruit grown by small California farms to be delivered to their Bay Area homes. Pretty much every kind of fruit I’ve tried from Fruitqueen has been the best example of each. Subscriptions aren’t required, and the ordering process is easy.
The game of pastries
A gift card to North Beach bakery sensation Butter & Crumble is ideal for pastry enthusiasts who love the game of trying to score a preorder box or of camping out with friends to buy à la carte.
Dedicated donations
Making a donation that’s dedicated to a specified loved one is easy to do at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, where donations are currently being matched at least through the end of November. 94% of donations go directly to the org’s services.
For out of towners
I was sent a multi-brand, dining-themed digital gift card from On Me to test out, and after using it to get some luscious orange drinks from Honeybear Boba in Dogpatch, I think this is service worthy of considering—especially when you want to gift a meal to a friend outside the area who may want to choose their own eating adventure.
Tamara Palmer offers the complimentary Food Book Club and California Eating newsletters.
