Nick and Monqiue Osborne didn’t plan on putting a smashburger taco on the menu at Ruby’s, their 2-month-old counter-service spot steps from Ocean Beach. Last summer, when they were beginning to solidify plans for Ruby’s — their first venture beyond Mission Rock Resort, which Nick’s family has been running for two decades — they envisioned serving wraps, soup, salads, and hot cups of bone broth out of a walk-up window.
But the hospitality vets will do pretty much anything to make a customer happy.
Nick and Monique Osborne.
“We had a lot of folks coming in our doors early on asking if we had a burger, and, you know, Monique and I just hate using the word ‘no’ when we’re talking to a customer,” Nick says. “So, the smashburger taco started out as a fun little special. Then, on the days on which it was omitted from the menu, we started to get some folks coming in like, ‘Oh, darn, they don’t have the smashburger taco.’”
Now the taco has earned a permanent place on the menu. The mashup — featuring a paper-thin patty, made from a blend of short rib and brisket, draped in American cheese and buried under a pile of shredded little gem lettuce, sliced tomato, and pickled onions, all swaddled in a palm-size flour tortilla — is like an In-N-Out burger that took a trip south of the border. Sure, it might sound like a cheap ploy to combine two distinct but reliably popular dishes, but, like most items on the Ruby’s menu, it’s simple, fun, and delicious.
Eight tacos makes up the heart of the Ruby’s menu — and the excellent smashburger version isn’t even the most off-the-wall. That title goes to the Irish taco, with corned beef and cabbage on a corn tortilla. There are the more expected options, including a popular ribeye taco that sees thick slices of beef showered with cotija cheese, salsa, and hot-pink pickled onions. An even better order would be the Asian-inflected carnitas, inspired by a meal the Osbornes had from a street vendor in Mexico City. The first item the couple finalized for the menu, the carnitas taco features hoisin-marinated pork combined with lightly pickled cucumber, sesame seeds, and green onion.
Fisherman’s stew.
Mellow marg.
Initially, they were making tortillas in-house. “But we very quickly recognized that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace,” Nick says. So they turned to a friend who runs Tortilleria El Molino in Concord. Any of the tacos can be ordered on corn tortillas — a popular option with gluten-free diners — or flour — the ideal route, being wonderfully supple and thin.
For the days when the fog rolls in and the Outer Sunset feels less beach and more bog, a bowl of fisherman’s stew is designed to warm you from the inside out. With origins in the family recipe from Mission Rock Resort, the dish takes classic cioppino and adds some kick via green olives, bell peppers, and salsa verde, alongside a generous portion of local fish (usually rockfish, sometimes petrale) and prawns. And no conversation about Ruby’s would be complete without mentioning the chicken Caesar wrap, which a local TikToker declared the best in the city (opens in new tab). “Monique and I, we don’t have TikTok,” Nick says. “But long story short, someone put up a raving review about our chicken Caesar, and the next day, you know, we had a line out the door.”
“We got our butts kicked,” Monique says with a laugh. “But I will say, I am so proud of that wrap.” One key difference between theirs and the sea of others is that they use crispy rice instead of croutons, so every bite gets a bit of crunch. The Caesar dressing, she adds, took months to perfect.
As the parents of three young kids, they stress that everything on the Ruby’s menu is child-approved. And for other parents coming though with the little ones, there are alcoholic beverages, but mostly of the type intended to let you keep your wits about you. The selection includes four wines, a handful of beers on tap and by the bottle, micheladas, and sangria. There’s also the “mellow margarita,” made with a low-ABV agave spirit, which delivers all the bright, tart, and refreshing notes of a full-octane cocktail without the full buzz.
The couple, both native San Franciscans, say they wanted to open Ruby’s in part because they had lived in the fast-changing Outer Sunset and fell in love with it. They built Ruby’s, which is named after their youngest child, to be a place where families could roll in with sandy feet after a day at the beach and young couples could pop in after an afternoon strolling Sunset Dunes.
In short, it’s the San Francisco beachside taco shack of their dreams. “Going into this, we had some rough ideas of what we wanted to achieve, but when you open your doors, you don’t really know what to expect,” Nick says between filling orders for cauliflower tacos and ahi poke bowls. “I think for the most part, we’ve stayed true to what we set out to achieve.”