Last year’s Top 100 returned after a five-year hiatus, which meant we had a clean slate. This year, MacKenzie Chung Fegan and I had to contend with the prior year’s rankings. Our guiding methodology: We appraised every restaurant on its own terms, which allowed us the freedom to compare a fine dining joint with, say, a deli — the former might deliver on technical refinement, while the latter might, beyond great sandwiches, meaningfully speak to its community. We agreed that new openings making their debut could land anywhere on the list, whereas changes in rank for last year’s restaurants demanded a higher bar. In some cases, we bumped up a spot due to a location upgrade, as with Sons & Daughters, which moved into a sleeker space in the Mission. Scoma’s, meanwhile, charmed enough to stay on the list, but moved down in position, based on our most recent visits.
One spot made a particularly significant leap: Hilda and Jesse in San Francisco, jumping 60 slots from No. 92 last year to No. 32 this year.
During the reporting cycle, I worked my way through tasting menus galore: Some consisted of a breezy five courses while others stretched to a whopping 20 — that’s about the runtime of a Christopher Nolan epic. Hilda and Jesse left the longest lasting impression. I was already a fan of the restaurant’s brunch, but I was blown away on a return dinner visit by its creative zeal, maximalist retro decor and mixture of finesse and levity. When so many luxe dining experiences can feel routine to the point of sterility, Hilda and Jesse proffers that the format should feel like nothing short of a party.
Chef Ollie Liedags and Rachel Sillcocks began Hilda and Jesse in 2019 as a brunch-for-dinner popup, which garnered attention for its take on breakfast classics — key among them the picturesque stack of chubby pancakes dolloped in whipped buttermilk, ornamented with mesquite-grilled fruits steeped in maple syrup, then finished with a thick pat of butter. These pancakes — which the restaurant calls the “gayest pancakes ever” — are peerless, putting sweet and savory on equal footing.
Hilda and Jesse’s cooking style might be over simplified as dissident comfort food, such as the aforementioned pancakes and an avocado “toast” made with sweet potato tempura and topped with onion-infused sour cream and shaved horseradish. But that discounts the skillful balance that appears across dishes. That was on full display in a fall dinner opening bite: a golden apple fritter coated in nutritional yeast and topped in honeynut squash puree, pickled fennel and urfa chile flakes.
Landing somewhere between a soup course and a salad course, a dish of sprouted lentils and juicy Sungold tomatoes got its dazzling tanginess from a tableside bath of sweet, mildly spiced tomatillo curry. I find that the apotheosis of tasting menus — a main course, all-too-often often consisting of medium-rare duck breast these days — inspires deja vu, but not so at Hilda and Jesse. In the fall, the tasting menu featured duck breast with a vivid sweet-and-sour sauce. But what stole the show was an accompaniment of grapes with crumbled, crunchy chicharron: odd, whimsical and irrefutably tasty.
Equally enchanting is the restaurant’s decor, which primes diners to expect more whimsy and charm than the average tasting menu. Imagine an American diner in Pee-Wee’s Play House and you get Hilda and Jesse’s dining room, decorated with checkered floors, pastel cyan-and-white striped walls with wood accents, and multiple colorful murals.
Hilda and Jesse has one of the most spellbinding tasting menus in the city. I wish more of them were even half as fun as it is.