20.
Nob Hill
Photo courtesy of The Big Four
For the most part, San Francisco’s best new restaurants aspire to the cutting edge, but The Big Four trades very much on nostalgia, right down to its name, a reference to the 19th-century founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. With its dark wood and leather, the ageless-looking space inside the recently reimagined Huntington Hotel seems aimed at a Gilded Age tycoon, and chef David Intonato’s menu sticks to San Francisco steakhouse staples — think wedge salads, shrimp cocktail, cioppino, and char-grilled cuts. The execution is pitch-perfect, though, and when you bite into a charred yet bloody-rare chunk of dry-aged ribeye and wash it down with an ice-cold martini (especially the signature Big Four Martini, a blend of gin, vodka, manzanilla sherry and dry vermouth), you’ll likely acknowledge that the classics are classics for a reason.