Virginia Miller is a food and drink writer based in San Francisco. She founded The Perfect Spot website and accompanying Substack, writing about the more than 15,000 restaurants she has visited worldwide. She serves as an Academy Chair for The World's 50 Best Restaurants and is on the James Beard Awards Committee. Published in more than 60 international outlets, her work appears in Bon Appétit, Time Out, Whisky Magazine, Distiller Magazine and more. She consults on dining and drink, from co-creating spirits to honing menus, and is a judge or lead judge in international spirits and bars awards.
Please introduce yourself to our members.
I'm Virginia Miller. I'm a longtime food and drink writer who started in the early days of blogging back in the mid-aughts, but was researching food and drink even before that, basically since I was a girl growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City on the New Jersey side. I've lived in San Francisco, my chosen home, my whole adult life, and travel half of every month around the world, around the U.S., and have been to close to 15,000 restaurants as of the end of this year, I'm sure. I do a minimum of 600 restaurants a year, and track them in spreadsheets. And I've been to even more bars.
Tell us about your current project.
I've been judging extensively in a long time, both in awards and competitions globally, in certainly restaurants, but also heavily in bars, cocktails, spirits, and some wine competitions as well, like The San Francisco International Wine Competition (SFIWC). I'm a lead judge in a lot of spirits competitions also for a good 14 years, and I've been doing spirits judging on top of the cocktails and bars. I'm the obsessive type and I'm very passionate about our amazing food and drink world. I like to leave no stone unturned and experience, taste everything and fall in love with the cultures and the people behind them as I'm doing so. I feel like food and drink is our quickest entry into a culture.
Tell us about the restaurant scene in San Francisco.
The restaurant scene in my home city of San Francisco, has historically been a pioneer of the farm to table movement, which certainly changed the U.S., but changed the world as well. Its effects reached far and wide. From that movement back in the 60s and 70s to, even craft beer in the 60s, craft distilling in the late 70s, early 80s, and then of course new world wine as we know it since the 1800s. California, Northern California and the Bay Area specifically has pioneered so much in food and drink. San Francisco has the second most Michelin stars to New York in all of North America. It is a small but mighty city that has vast and far-reaching influence for its size. And for better or for worse, this happens in so many areas from tech to health and environmental causes. It's a pioneering city and a city of pushing boundaries, socially and politically, and all of the above. So it's an exciting place to be and a place where I became a restaurant critic and a drink writer, and it allowed a whole new universe I kind of hadn't expected. But, like everywhere since the pandemic, and with things going on in the US currently, certainly San Francisco has faced an immense amount of struggles. But I really hope people come and see for themselves because San Francisco is as vibrant as ever when it comes to dining and drink. And a lot of trends that you'll see happening elsewhere often quietly start here and move elsewhere. And there continues to be exciting new openings. I am proud of the incredible cutting edge things that keep coming out in this city.
What are your three favorite restaurants in San Francisco, and why are they great?
Naming only three favorites is tricky, so I’ll list six. I have hundreds of best of the bests alone here in my city. But if I look at what's most exciting this past year, just a snapshot of what's happening now, kind of a top list emerge, and there's many others I love.
1. Merchant Roots is an upscale, innovative restaurant like no other in any city. I've been raving and writing about it since January 2019 when it was basically eight seats in the back of a wine shop, just half a block from Michelin-starred State Bird Provisions and The Progress. At Merchant Roots, every three months, they change the entire theme of the restaurant. In August 2024, they finally got a much bigger space in SoMa, south of downtown San Francisco. It’s multi-room, a movable feast from room to room. But they only grew from eight to twelve seats. So despite dramatically increasing the space, they still are keeping it intimate and that dinner party feel that we all loved about it. I’m hoping a few more people will get to experience it this way. There’s a couple of seatings a night with art and video installations and ceramics shop in the back. They make much of their own plateware because what they’re doing is so creative and out of the box. It's a tight, creative team. Chef Ryan Shelton and his team will do themes likeVanity Fair, Thackeray’s novel, explored from high/low class systems of the era. Or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from fresh angles. They did California’s Great Trees, where we were eating elements of the trees, like the great sequoias and redwoods of California. They currently have a Humpty Dumpty theme, which is about eggs and broken things, exploring concepts like breaking the law and beyond.It’s super creative, whimsical, over the top, and deeply studied. It's educational but never stuffy. For example, during Humpty Dumpty, they’d throw an egg on your plate: splatter it in front of you, then make an French egg drop soup – or do a butter mochi duck confit musubi with egg. It’s truly delightful, surprising, and the best part: delicious. In its new space and much more dramatic digs, I hope the world will come to know it. I’ve been to almost every theme once a quarter, which is hard for me to do, but this place is so special I go out of my way to visit.
2. Enclos is another huge one, located in the town of Sonoma. Everybody in the fine dining world knows SingleThread, which is in one of the northernmost towns of Sonoma County, in Healdsburg. But this is in downtown Sonoma itself, this gorgeous town square in a historic town that has one of the 17 California missions right off the square and Old West and Spanish architecture. It’s a lovely old town.
Enclos opened in a little Victorian cottage just off the square in December 2024. This chef and a lot of his team, including a sommelier, come from Michelin-starred restaurants in San Francisco, Harbor House Inn and beyond. It is a stellar team and stellar food. This is the kind of place right off the bat I could see having a Michelin star (or two) quickly. Chef Brian Limoges is doing really creative things, like his play on venison tartare served on its antlers, attributing all the deer in Sonoma County. Since he hails from New England and grew up there, he tributes this with almost chawanmushi-like play on clam chowder, as a clam chowder custard with geoduck and Manila clams.
Sixty-day dry-aged tuna belly will be presented like a steak tableside, served with local Koshihikari rice grown in the Sacramento Valley Delta, not far from San Francisco. The wine pairings are superb. The cottage is stunning and modern inside. This place is going to be a big one.
3. Prelude at the Jay SF hotel in downtown San Francisco is run by Chef Celtin Hendrickson-Jones. They serve modern Southern food with a California bent. This is a chef who's grown and raised Northern California (Sacramento area), whose mom and grandmother are from the South. They weaned him on Southern food and deviled eggs and ambrosia salad and the rest.
This shows up in his menus in delightful ways. I'm a deep lover of Southern American food and study it region by region. Cajun and Creole most of all, but I love Low Country. You see all those touches pop up here with a totally different spin. Of course, with our incredible California ingredients, but with fine dining and playful takes. Think dirty rice stuffed chicken wings, with the bar manager taking the same spice rub on the wings to use in their house martini for his fried chicken inspired dirty martini that's buttermilk washed and allium infused with chilies, black pepper and dill. The chef makes a pimento cheese scooped up with fish skin chicharrones. His smoked catfish dumplings almost have a gnocchi texture, killer in crawfish etouffee sauce. It's all served on mismatched grandma's style china, yet is upscale, refined. I could easily see it getting a Michelin, but it's still got this kind of down-home love. Another example: homemade nutter butter-esque peanut butter cookies with a shot of boozy milk to finish.
4. Tiya, in San Francisco's Marina District comes from two Indian brothers, Chefs Sujan and Pujan Sarkar. Chef Sujan has restaurants all over the world and has opened restaurants in Dubai, London, Chicago, where he lives most of the time. His brother Pujan lives in San Francisco and together they opened Tiya in 2024, the first that they opened and created together. It's their signature creative modern Indian food but with a California mashup. You'll get Indian pav bread inspired by their favorite babka masala. They bake pav masala bread in babka style, inspired by their favorite babka at Jane bakery here in San Francisco. Or goat birria tacos with Chettinad spices. It's kind of a mid-range a la carte, but there's a tasting menu, too. With cocktails to match.
What’s a new restaurant in San Francisco that you think is doing great things?
Just since January alone, exciting newcomers like Maz Naba's modern Lebanese pop-up Ilna or Sophia Akbar and Paul Iglesias' modern Afghani spot in Oakland: Jaji. But since later last year, The Wild is an impeccable menu of locally foraged ingredients and a killer spirits, sake and wine selection of rarities around a binchotan grill. And now that Merchant Roots has its own larger, dramatic space – complete with ceramics studio where they make their own creative plateware and edible champagne bubble room – their seemed an ever-changing, thoughtful but totally playful menus, are unparalleled anywhere.
Do you have any hidden gem that you want to highlight in your city?
So many... While the options are endless, one that comes immediately to mind is the classic style of San Francisco seafood bar for over a century, one where you always find local oysters and Dungeness crab, including crab Louie salad, which was invented here. But also cioppino, another SF classic, created by Italian immigrants back in the day. The great, over-a-century-old Swan Oyster Depot is unparalleled in the world, and still the best SF-style seafood bar. But a second option and a legend since the 1970s that most travelers don't know about – equally tiny, so expect waits – is Anchor Oyster Bar in the Castro.
A few blocks walk from that and totally under the radar is Tijuana-style tacos at Tacos El Tucan – oh, those out-of-control quesatacos and keto tacos with a fried cheese tortilla, an all-cheese “shell"!
What’s your favorite kind of restaurant, and why?
I crave and love the holistic picture of the spectrum, from high to low – whether banh mi or kebab shops, creative fine dining feasts or everything in between. I eat literally everything (bugs to offal) and adore foods in any and all cuisines I've tried at roughly 15k restaurants and eateries now, so what makes for "favorite" is widely varied and vast. However, at any level or cuisine, common factors are always first and foremost unforgettable food made with soul, people and service with heart and for next-level points, excellent drink in whatever categories. Decor is valued and special, but even a dingy dive can be a magical favorite if it has those other factors – so design and atmosphere take a back seat for me, much as I value that (and music soundtracks, which I always pay attention to).
What are your three favorite food cities and your favorite restaurants in those cities?
New Orleans
Besides my own city of San Francisco – my number one anywhere and why I live here, having grown up in NYC and LA areas – my other favorite U.S. city is New Orleans. For nearly 2 decades, I've been studying this unparallelled (in the world) Grande Dame of the South, with cuisines (Cajun and Creole) that are mostly bastardized and rarely understood outside of Louisiana. It is small but mighty, a deep and complex joy. This birthplace of jazz is such a sensual city, you can feel it in the air and taste it in the food. Of course, I love many of the legends, the up-and-coming chefs in global cuisines, and traditional hole-in-the-walls for everything from po boys to jamabalya.
But what E.J. Lagasse IV (Emeril Lagasse's son) is recently doing at the newly reborn Emeril's is fine dining like his other restaurant Nola has never seen, showcasing the city's legendary, historic cuisines in fresh, authentic, elegant ways.
Chef Ana Castro is pushing Mexican food (eons behind California and Mexico) in new directions for the entire South at Acamaya.
And Saint-Germain's tasting menus in a wine bar and historic house is another example of a new era Nola has not previously seen of creative fine dining that can keep up with greats in major food cities
Tokyo
Tokyo (and Japan overall) is one of my most beloved places and cultures in the world. The food options are miraculous at every level. The 6-seat, no website Sushisho Masa, was one of my most unforgettable sushi feasts historically.
Italy and France
I'm also 100% an Italy girl (and Sicilian/Aeolian on my mother's side). Though Rome is my big city all the way, I adore region after region and countless restaurants across the country. Right on the border of France on the Cotes d'Azur, minutes from Italy, I was just at Mirazur. It's well known as it was number one in World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2019. But it's exciting to see firsthand how they have just started putting in place for a new farm, inn and chefs' "school" with farming and close-to-the-land training in the mountains from the coastal restaurant. I'm likewise excited to soon return to the great 2 Michelin-starred Duomo in Ragusa, Sicily. I haven't been since 2019 and Chef Ciccio Sultano's decadent, playful dishes shine in a charming hillside medieval town.
What is your favorite dish and where is your favorite restaurant to have it?
It's impossible to choose a favorite dish as I have favorites in every cuisine possible. But if I'm going to just randomly choose one, Burmese salads are some of the most vibrant and delicious in the world. SF is home to the biggest and oldest Burmese population and restaurants in North America, so there are many great versions. Tea leaf salad is the most famous, but I adore a Burmese mango salad. None more than at SF's Mandalay since 1984: juicy, pickled-sweet strips of mango, onions, cilantro, peppers, fried onions and garlic. I crave it when I'm traveling and return home from press and judging trips: it's healthy, light yet bursting with savory-sweet flavor.
Who is an up-and-coming chef you are keeping an eye on?
Chef Celtin Hendrickson-Jones’ modern Southern cooking at the new Prelude in SF is unlike anywhere I've been to even in the South. For two decades, I love and have studied the regional cuisines of the American South, from barbecue to Low Country. Creative, more upscale, modern Southern food is rarely done at the level chef Celtin is doing it: it's both upscale, but also fun and whimsical. I dream about his gnocchi-like, dissolve-in-the-mouth smoked catfish dumplings in crayfish étouffée gravy.
Who is a food expert whose restaurant recommendations you’d like to see?
I'd love to hear some favorites from the great two Michelin chef Suzette Gresham of SF's Acquerello since 1989 – she's such a chef and mentor and goes deep in Italian food. And from the legendary Joyce Goldstein, pioneering chef in the 1980s and writer ever since. There is no book like her Inside the California Food Revolution: Thirty Years That Changed Our Culinary Consciousness. It’s the best breakdown and story of how California's pioneering farm-to-table, environmental pioneering, vegetarian, global and boundary-pushing chefs (many of them female since decades back) have changed the way the world eats.
