Bonnie Wach

Sure, cocktail bars get all the glory and wine bars have a steady clientele, but San Francisco’s craft beer movement shows no sign of slowing down. Take the annual Beer Week fest, which in seven years has gone from 50 events to more than 700 suds-centric happenings all over the Bay Area. From frothy stouts to fruity Belgian ales, beer bars in San Francisco cater to just about every style and flavor. Tap into our favorite standouts for hundreds of local and international options. To take an awesome tour of San Francisco's craft beer spots in an open-air ride, click here.  RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best bars in San Francisco

Whether you like them covered in toppings or filled with jelly and cream, there's something magical about biting into one of the best donuts in San Francisco. You’ll find a healthy (and not-so-healthy) sprinkling of every kind of donut shop in the city—from 24-hour restaurants to even vegan restaurants. Here’s our pick of the best raised-and-glazed dessert options in San Francisco.  RECOMMENDED: The best coffee shops and cafés in San Francsico

Though San Franciscans would rather cheer for the Dodgers than get caught riding one of those double-decker buses, it’s still fun to play tourist on one of the best San Francisco tours every now and then. Happily, there’s no shortage of offbeat excursions to quench the local thirst for discovery, from boozy trips to the best San Francisco breweries to strolls through the mural-covered Mission District. There are plenty of options for first-time visitors to the City by the Bay, too: You can get the lay of the land on a bike ride through Golden Gate Park or a walking tour of all the best San Francisco attractions.

From the best chocolate shops to the top candy stores, San Francisco is a veritable dessert mecca. Still, it's tried-and-true ice cream that has our hearts. The hometown of Bi-Rite, Humphry Slocombe and Smitten, we take our ice cream—and ingredients therein—seriously. Whether you crave candy-loaded concoctions, exotic seasonal swirls (fennel-pollen-blackberry, anyone?) or Italian gelato, there’s a scoop shop for every taste.  RECOMMENDED: The best dessert in San Francisco 

Back when the term “vegetarian” conjured visions of tofu and bean sprouts and not much else, San Francisco restaurants were already breaking the mold, creating innovative meatless cuisine that had even diehard carnivores setting down their steak knives. Now that there’s a farmers’ market in practically every neighborhood and a wide choice of vegetarian restaurants, meat-free menu options have become as commonplace as burgers and burrata. Whether you’re a lifelong veggie devotee, or adopting a healthy diet is among your resolutions, peruse our top picks for places that dedicate most or all of their menus to plant-based cooking. To take a guided tour of all of San Francisco's best vegetarian spots, click here. 

In a city that’s been at the center, if not the birthplace, of innumerable nationwide culinary trends ranging from slow food and pop-up restaurants to fusion, farm-to-table, and artisanal toast, it’s a wonder that chefs in San Francisco restaurants continually find ways to raise their game. But this is a town that loves—and is occasionally required—to reinvent itself, never feeling satisfied to just rest on its (bay) laurels. On any given night, you might find yourself dining on American dim sum, 900-degree-oven-fired Neapolitan pizza, smoked meat by-the-pound, and just about every hybrid ethnic cuisine you can imagine—Asian-Italian and Hungarian-Japanese to Cal-Moroccan, French-Japanese, and Korean burritos. There are further culinary riches in the best bars in San Francisco, many of which lay on restaurant-caliber snacks and small plates to accompany the creative cocktails.

Perhaps nowhere is San Francisco’s history as a cultural melting pot better expressed than on its sandwich boards. At delis, food trucks, and mom-and-pop(up) shops around town, artisan craftsmen constantly reinvent the notion of the hand-held lunch, stacking flavors and ingredients from India to Italy, Korea to Kansas between slices (or hunks or slabs or pillowy pockets) of bread. Eat your way through our list of stellar sandwiches, then walk it off on a cool city tour or shopping trek.

An incredible variety of culinary styles fall into the “American” category, from classic burgers-and-brunch spots to upscale eateries serving New American and California cuisine. Some of the city’s best American restaurants draw on a variety of influences, including French at Gary Danko and Eastern European and Japanese at Bar Tartine. Of course, the farm-to-table movement continues to thrive—at spots like Greens and Zuni Café, to name a few.

Foggy, sunny, expensive, free-spirited, inspiring, infuriating—living in San Francisco has as many ups and downs as the city’s 43 hills. Your first year after moving here is full of new experiences—finding your preferred spot for single-origin espresso, for example, and learning to keep a tote bag with you at all times. After a few more years, you're able to tick off most San Francisco rites of passage. Now that you’ve mastered the basics, take these tips accumulated over decades of living here and you’ll soon be navigating the streets of San Francisco like a pro. 1. Waze your way through downtown San Francisco’s labyrinth of one-way streets and rush hour logjams can be a motorized Sisyphean hell. The Waze traffic app helps you avoid the worst snarls by using crowd-sourced real-time data to map the route with the least traffic. Waze can also direct you to the cheapest gas station along the way (no small thing considering SF gas prices are among the highest in the nation).   2. Park like a boss Street parking anywhere in this city can be challenging, but around Fisherman’s Wharf and AT&T Park, it’s an Olympic event. If you can find a legal meter, it’s likely to cost you upwards of $5 to $7 an hour—which still beats the $76 expired meter ticket. You can avoid the latter at least using PayByPhone app, which lets you add time to the meter from your cell phone and will also alert you when your time’s expiring. SFpark, run by the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority, uses rea