Good Taste helps you eat well in the Bay Area. In honor of NBA All-Star Weekend coming to San Francisco on Saturday and Sunday, here are some along the route to Thrive City and the Chase Center (as well as what to eat once you get to Thrive City). For best results, walk, bike, or take Muni. And show up early! Everything is gonna be packed.
Delah Coffee
Delah Coffee (370 Fourth Street, SF) is open from 7am to 11pm to keep you caffeinated with high-quality Yemeni coffee and tea for the busy weekend. The honey-sweetened, cardamom and cinnamon-rich Yemeni latte is exquisite. They also have excellent snacks suitable for any hour, such as the sweet-savory bee bites, a pull-apart bread stuffed with cream cheese and drizzled with honey, or the array of milk cakes (I can’t get the rose flavored one off my mind). From there, it’s about a 30-minute walk to Thrive City, or you can walk about to the T in about five and get dropped off right in front.
Mestiza
I recently had lunch under the bright covered patio at Mestiza (214 Townsend Street, SF), where the Mexipino (that’s Mexican-Filipino, if you’re visiting) bowls and wraps run between $13-20. The restaurant describes itself as plant-forward, making it a good place to take vegans, omnivores, and everything in between. A friend and I split a vegan mushroom tofu sisig wrap and a pulled pork adobo bowl, but had our own individual dishes of soft serve caramel ice cream with coconut flakes. A big bonus: Chef Reina, who is well-known for her former eponymous vegan restaurant in Brisbane, has joined forces with Mestiza. It’s open from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. over the weekend. It’ll take 20 minutes to walk to Thrive City, or a few minutes to the T.
Cupcakin’ Bake Shop
Cupcakin’ Bake Shop (7 Warriors Way, SF) sits very high up in my Bay Area Cupcake Hall of Fame that I just invented in my head. Outside of Thrive City, there are two locations in Berkeley, one in Oakland, one in Walnut Creek, and two in Atlanta, a real Bay to the A success story. I scrape the majority of the frosting off of most cupcakes that are flung my way, but I wouldn’t dream to do that with these because that’s how good they are. You’ll find the shop hiding demurely behind the Chase Center.
Señor Sisig Thrive City
The new Señor Sisig Thrive City (151 Warriors Way, Suite 103, SF) is going to be a solid spot to get burritos, platos, wings and delicious drinks to go right in the complex, as Good Taste learned a few weeks ago at the VIP opening party. I expect it to be liney, but it will hopefully move quickly. My current recs here are the Tosilog burrito, made with sweet pork, fried egg, adobo garlic rice, and sliced tomatoes, and a lechon kawali plato, a crispy pork plate with tortillas.
Dumpling Time Thrive City
There will definitely be a line to sit down at Dumpling Time Thrive City (191 Warriors Way, Suite 101, SF), but it’s well worth showing up as early as possible to try (and to ask if there’s a secret menu available for the weekend). It’s hard to go wrong with anything here, but I especially love the gyoza with shrimp, crab, and chili butter; the tom yum soup dumplings, shrimp toast, and garlic noodles with shrimp, broccoli, mushrooms, garlic butter, Parmesan, and parsley. The rainbow slaw, an exclusive to this location, is a refreshing bite in between dumplings. Dumpling Time is opening in Stanford Shopping Center soon and has several other Bay Area locations, including the original Design District spot in SF, Santana Row in San Jose, San Ramon, and Berkeley.
Kayah by Burma Love
It may also be hard to get a table at the relatively new Kayah by Burma Love (151 Warriors Way, Suite 105, SF) this weekend, but you may have a shot if you show up early. Good Taste was recently invited for lunch there and, after sampling a little bit of everything, I found it to be as consistent and enjoyable as Burma Love’s collection of restaurants. The menu of comfort dishes is going to be perfect for the cold weather, but don’t skip the cold classic: the rainbow-hued tea leaf salad, one of San Francisco’s most iconic dishes. The roti-rapped Keema platha is also a fun choice, a Southeast Asian take on a quesabirria made with curried short rib, Oaxaca cheese and consomé.
Chase Center
One important Chase Center rule to note is that the arena does not allow outside food to come in, which I sadly found out one night while trying to carry Dumpling Time leftovers into a concert. (Those potstickers weren’t going to hurt anyone.) Chase Center has a list of food vendors that operate there for select events, but every time I have gone there for a concert, many of them have been closed; it may be different for game days. That makes it hard to recommend specific places to eat once you are inside, but I will assume that Tony G’s (aka North Beach restaurateur, world pizza champion, and Best of the Bay winner Tony Gemignani) will sell reliably strong pizza slices at the very least. Other vendors to look out for and see if they’re open include the youth nonprofit Old Skool Cafe and Sam’s Chowder House from Half Moon Bay.
Tamara publishes the California Eating website, newsletter, and zine.
