I work in San Francisco and live in the South Bay. The train does the rest. On a weekday I’m on the earliest train home after work, no exploring, which makes me, somehow, a tourist in the city I commute to. The actual exploring happens when I come back to SF on a weekend, which is less often than it should be. The list below is the version of SF I’d hand a friend, built from five days a week of being in it and the occasional Saturday return.
Food
Mensho is, in my book, the best ramen on the planet. I’ve eaten my way through Marufuku, Ramen Nagi, the rest of the canon, and nothing comes close. The broth is heavy and creamy and the bowl is better for it. Every component on the dish earns its place. If you’re going to wait in one line in the city, wait in this one.
Daeho is the kalbi-jjim place. Pricier, worth it. Order the kalbi-jjim, do not flinch.
Chinatown is the play for dim sum and Chinese BBQ, both to-go. Good Mong Kok is the dim sum window I keep coming back to, and the BBQ I’m pretty sure is Kam Po Kitchen. Parking down there is its own punishment, like everywhere else in the city, so I dispatch my brother to grab the order while I do another loop around the block. If you can bring a second person, station them curbside and run the loop yourself. Solo, it’s a parking lottery you’ll mostly lose, but the food still earns the inconvenience.
For ice cream, Humphrey Slocombe. The Vietnamese coffee scoop is the safe bet, the matcha is the more interesting bet. They rotate variations: last time I had matcha snickerdoodle, I think also matcha strawberry, and both held up. Get one of each and split.
Boba goes to Little Sweet. Their plain milk tea is the right order, and the fresh milk version with boba is the upgrade if you’ve been walking in the sun.
Mexican food in SF is its own genre, mostly clustered in the Mission. I don’t have a stake in the burrito wars, but a Super Burrito with guacamole is hard to mess up no matter which spot you walk into. Pick the one with the shortest line and you’ll be fine.
For pastries and coffee, skip the original Arsicault and go to the China Basin Park branch. Same kouign-amann, almost no wait, even on weekends. Blue Bottle is right next door, so you can stack a great pastry against great coffee in one stop. The walk around China Basin is sneaky-good. Water on one side, the Giants’ stadium close enough to feel, that’s a hard combination to beat on a clear morning.
To do
The Presidio gets a full afternoon. The walk that hits everything: Lyon Street Steps up, across to the Andy Goldsworthy Wood Line, over to Veterans Overlook, down through Crissy Field, finish at Fort Point under the bridge. By the end you’ve earned a coffee and seen the city from three different angles. If the weather holds, you can keep going up onto the bridge itself.
The Golden Gate Bridge is the usual answer because it’s a good answer. You can walk it, bike it, or drive it. SF fog has a sense of humor about your timeline, but there’s a live bridge webcam online and you can check it before you leave the apartment. Saves you a wasted trip. For better photo positions: Battery Spencer is the postcard, Hawk Hill is the version everyone forgets to check, and Baker Beach is the long-lens shot from the south side.
Fisherman’s Wharf for the sea lions, Ghirardelli Square for the obvious thing. Easy stop, you’re not staying long, that’s fine.
The Ferry Building is the one I always tell people to actually budget time for. The shops inside the pier hit, the food is good top to bottom, and the building still does its day job. Ferries leave from the back doors for towns around the bay.
Sausalito is the popular run, and earned. It’s a relaxed coastal town twenty minutes by water and a full nervous-system reset. Restaurants on the pier, houses on the hill, a harbor full of boats slowly going nowhere on a Saturday.
A note on groceries: SF doesn’t have a good reasonably-priced chain. No Publix, no Wegmans, no HEB. Safeway and Whole Foods are the big two and neither earns a postcard. The grocery stop worth making, weirdly, is Rainbow Grocery, the co-op in the Mission. Doesn’t carry meat, carries a wall of things you didn’t know you wanted. I’ve found Torres chips and Humphrey Slocombe pints there. Treat it as a small museum of upscale snacks.
Waymo is the SF tech experience worth doing. I’m fairly sure this was the first city it launched in, and once you ride one you start spotting the rest of the autonomous fleet around town. The whole city runs at the frontier, for better and worse. The billboards alone tell you what kind of week the AI cycle is having. I personally find the competitiveness and the transactional vibe of SF exhausting, but it pays the bills, so I’ll take the trade.
Tennis
Most public courts in SF are free and bookable through the city’s tennis app. They refresh it now and then but the booking flow always lands somewhere obvious. The thing they don’t tell you is the wind. By the afternoon it picks up enough that everyone out there is hitting Nadal’s banana shot whether they meant to or not. Morning tennis is the move.
Goldman Tennis Center inside Golden Gate Park is the proper facility. Twenty-plus courts, real complex, easy to lose a half day there. Dolores Park has a couple of walk-in courts and the right energy for a casual hit, but the wait at peak hours gets silly. Potrero Hill is the one you go to for the view: courts up on the hill overlooking the city and the Bay Bridge. It is also where the wind punishes you hardest. Worth it for the photo, if not the rally.
The boring stuff
Don’t drive in if you can help it. Parking is hard, expensive, and most of the tourist spots have decent transit. If you do bring a car, leave nothing visible inside. Nothing. Car break-ins are common and the cost of a smashed window will out-pace whatever was in the bag.
You’ll see plenty of people in the city who are clearly having a hard time. Most are not interested in you. Give them space, mind your own pace, you’ll be fine.
The neighborhoods to skip are mostly not on the tourist map anyway. The Tenderloin earns its reputation; it’s fine to walk through during the day, less so after dark. The standard advice (phone in your pocket, head up) is the right advice.
Reading this back
That’s the San Francisco I show up for: a bowl of ramen that ruins you for other ramen, a walk that ends under a bridge, a co-op that sells the ice cream you just had, courts in the wind, and a commute I don’t mind because of all of it.