{"id":389748,"date":"2026-07-07T22:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T22:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/389748\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T22:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T22:03:08","slug":"a-monthly-pay-what-you-want-day-just-might-make-the-tasting-menu-at-merchant-roots-more-accessible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/389748\/","title":{"rendered":"A Monthly \u2018Pay What You Want\u2019 Day Just Might Make the Tasting Menu at Merchant Roots More Accessible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going out to eat is expensive. As a chef, Ryan Shelton knows this. His fine dining restaurant, Merchant Roots<\/a>, is among the city\u2019s more expensive tasting menus (priced at $238 per person). It\u2019s a precarious balance of operation costs and salaries versus what diners are willing to pay for the experience of Merchant Roots\u2019s fanciful, themed dinner menus that change quarterly. It\u2019s a cost-prohibitive experience, and Shelton\u2019s been thinking of ways to lessen the burden. \u201cThe level of investment it takes to really experience Merchant Roots is a bit high,\u201d he says, \u201cso I\u2019ve been trying to find a way to make it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter Masala y Maiz<\/a>. The Michelin-starred Mexico City restaurant run by Saqib Keval and Norma Listman opened in 2017 and offers \u201cpaga lo que puedas\u201d or \u201cpay what you can\u201d days. Guests receive a menu without prices, and customers pay what they can afford or feel is the value of the meal. In 2026, Listman and Keval are spreading the idea internationally<\/a>, setting up a Pay What You Can day<\/a> on Wednesday, August 26, with participating restaurants across Mexico, the U.S., India, Cuba, and more. In the Bay Area, Bombera<\/a>, Merkado<\/a>, Reem\u2019s<\/a>, Sfizio<\/a>, Understory<\/a>, and Valley Swim Club<\/a> have all signed up to take part.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard about [Listman and Keval] in Mexico City, and they had finally put to words the thing that I wanted to do, and so that\u2019s why we\u2019re doing it now,\u201d Shelton says. Merchant Roots\u2019s pricing is \u201cvery much based on what my staff needs to make,\u201d Shelton says, but with this, he can welcome more people in. \u201cI want more people to get to experience Merchant Roots, and especially, multiple facets of Merchant Roots, hopefully multiple themes,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I feel like now I have the language to figure out how to put that out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelton, however, is taking things beyond a singular day; he\u2019s set aside the first Tuesday of every month as a Pay What You Want meal for the remainder of 2026. Diners can book a reservation (at no cost) for those days via Tock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea has quietly caught on. The first Pay What You Want dinners are Tuesday, August 4, and the team quietly released the reservations for August and September on the restaurant\u2019s reservation platform. Both are already sold out. And as of this writing, Pay What You Want reservations only remain for November, December, and January 2027.<\/p>\n

Shelton made the program possible by adding a couple more dollars per ticket for regular reservations throughout the month. \u201cThe finances do happen to work out, but for me, it\u2019s more about having a little peace of mind about my regular ticket price,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As for who Shelton wants to come in on those nights, he \u201clooks forward to being surprised.\u201d He\u2019s hoping that the days will make his dinners more accessible for folks in the hospitality industry or education, for example, or anyone who considers a tasting menu a \u201conce in a lifetime kind of expense.\u201d Shelton adds: \u201cI think fine dining should be for everybody … It shouldn\u2019t just be for the people that have disposable income.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked what his benchmark is for a successful Pay What You Want program, Shelton says, \u201cIf someone who had written off fine dining came to one of my Pay What You Want nights and told me that they found something to get them excited about dining again, that would be amazing to me. That\u2019s the benchmark for what I\u2019m looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merchant Roots<\/a> (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco) is open Tuesday through Saturday, with seatings at 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Reservations for Pay What You Want and other nights are available on Tock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardy Wilson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Going out to eat is expensive. As a chef, Ryan Shelton knows this. His fine dining restaurant, Merchant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,16677,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-389748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-restaurant-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}