A Pearl 6101 chef branches out to Divisadero, a huge new dim sum restaurant opens in the East Bay, and MacKenzie Chung Fegan reviews Happy Crane, all in This Week In Food.

It remains a busy time on the SF restaurant scene as we enter the depths of fall, with tonight marking the opening of Arquet at the Ferry Building, which we mentioned last week. It’s one of the more hotly anticipated arrivals of the year, from the Michelin-starred team behind the much smaller Sorrel, and I’ll bring you more news once I get in to see it.

And the extra-luxe Wolfsbane, in the former Serpentine space in Dogpatch, from the team behind Lord Stanley, made its official debut Wednesday, October 15. More on that also to come.

There’s news of a replacement restaurant for the vacant former Ragazza space on Divis, and it’s called Esme. Excitingly, as Tablehopper tells us, it’s a new venture from one of the partners behind the Richmond’s beloved Pearl 6101, Susan Dunn. All we know at this point is that there will be “seasonal cooking, and [an] expertly selected wine and beer list,” and that the space has a cozy neighborhood vibe with a lovely garden in back, that will be great to see come alive again.

I was able to have a full meal at Ama, the new lounge-meets-restaurant in the Transamerica complex (technically the building next to the Pyramid, accessible through the Redwood Park), and I can confirm chef Brad Kilgore knows his way around pasta and elegant seafood preparations — and his signature scallop-gruyere foam dish with a soft-boiled egg hidden inside is indeed a decadent dip for his tomato-miso brioche. Thursday nights feature a live singer in the DJ booth at Ama Social Club, the restaurant’s back room, with a decidedly more mellow vibe than when the DJ will be playing on weekend nights. The front Copper Room, where the bar is located, features a prix-fixe menu and a quieter vibe but just 18 total seats. Do note that things get pricy fast, with some especially expensive by-the-glass wines.

The enormous HL Peninsula Restaurant, a 28,000-square-foot dim sum restaurant in a former Rite-Aid, has just opened in Castro Valley. As the Chronicle reports, the chain, which has restaurants around China and opened its first Bay Area outpost in South San Francisco in 2018, specializes in Guangzhou-style barbecued meats in addition to dim sum dumplings. And the restaurant, with an 850-person capacity, can clearly host large events and is already taking bookings as far out as 2028.

Eater today highlighted the recently launched pop-up Here Before, from Verjus chef Walker Stern, formerly chef at Le Rock in New York, and partner Devon Nevola. They’re offering some sophisticated and delicious dishes in casual settings — including at a Saturday pop-up at Onsen, the Tenderloin bathhouse, in July — with a California-meets-New York aeshetic. And they’re popping up at Berkeley’s Broc Cellars this weekend (noon to 4 pm Sunday), with their grill-focused menu, dubbed La Grillade. Check the Instagram link above for future pop-ups.

The Mission’s beloved (and some might say overrated!) La Taqueria has been added to the Michelin Guide as a recommended SF restaurant (no stars though). The restaurant posted about it on Instagram this week, saying, “This recognition belongs to every hand that’s worked in our kitchen, every guest who’s stood in line, and every family who’s shared our food across generaciones!”

And the Chronicle’s MacKenzie Chung Fegan offers her review this week of Happy Crane, the summer’s big opening in Hayes Valley. She’s a fan of the new, modern Chinese spot from chef James Yeun Leong Parry, calling it “the opening salvo of a chef with a point of view, and a welcome addition to the city’s contemporary Asian culinary scene.” She’s deeply in love with long-braised beef shin, or jiang niu rou, which she calls “a masterpiece.” And even without mentioning the Peking duck that is supposed to be a signature of the restaurant, she raves about the dim sum experience over the prix fixe, and suggests, in the current SF landscape, Happy Crane lands “solidly in between Four Kings and Mister Jiu’s” on the “casual-to-swank spectrum.”

Top image: Courtesy of Arquet, photo by Alexis Howard