San Francisco: its food, its restaurants and its chefs

As the San Francisco Michelin guide is released today we're looking at its food scene and the signature dishes. San Francisco is at the forefront of trends such as Asian fusion cuisine and exotic greens, whilst food trucks are a common sight on the roads, offering a source of ethnically diverse street foods. The city and encompassing area is famous for its bread and various meat and seafood dishes, along with dessert. Among the unique foods in the area are abalone (sea snails), crab, sand dabs, shrimp and crusty sourdough. Regionally typical dishes include Joe’s Special, Hangtown Fry, the Mission burrito, It's It and Cioppino. Joe’s Special originated in 1932 when the chef told a local bandleader that all the kitchen had left after a late night show was spinach, onions, mushrooms, ground beef and eggs. Apparently the bandleader told him to just ‘mix them together’ and it has been a local favourite since then. The Mission burrito first became popular during the 1960s and is distinguished from other varieties by its larger size and inclusion of extra rice and other ingredients. The essential components include the tortilla, Spanish rice, beans, a choice of filling, and the choice of salsa, ranging from hot to mild. Some taquerias offer a “super” variety which includes a choice of meat and all of the typical burrito ingredients. Many taquerias provide vegetable or tofu mixtures to accommodate their vegetarian customers. The Hangtown Fry is one of the many dishes coming out of the Californian Gold Rush in the 1840s and 50s. It combines scrambled eggs, oysters and bacon and originated in Placerville, known then as Hangtown. Allegedly, the name either originates from a lucky miner’s idea of a treat or a condemned man’s request for a last meal. Another dish to come out of the Gold Rush is sourdough bread. In contrast to other areas of the USA, San Francisco’s sourdough has remained in production since 1849 and is a white bread characterised by a pronounced sourness not found in other region’s varieties. It combines well with sea foods and soups, such as cioppino, clam chowder and chilli. Cioppino is a fish stew of Italian-American cuisine. It consists of crab, clams, shrimp, scallops, squid, mussels and fish sourced from the Pacific. The name comes from the Ligurian dialect meaning “to chop” or “chopped,” which describes the making of the stew by chopping up various leftovers of the day’s catch. It’s It, is a mouth-watering dessert, debuted in 1928 at George Whitney’s amusement park.