1601 Bar & Kitchen

1601 Howard St, San Francisco, CA

At 1601, you don’t just taste California — you taste the Indian Ocean. The hopper with egg and sambols is a masterstroke — a bowl-shaped crepe made of rice and coconut milk, with a yolky core and two fierce relishes on the side. The crunch of its edges, the warmth of its center — it’s street food elevated, the kind of dish that teaches you humility. Then there’s the seafood curry: local black cod, crab, mushrooms, butter beans — all swimming in a coconut-curry broth laced with tamarind and Sri Lankan spices.

Far from a gimmick, the Eastern flavors at 1601 are the backbone. They sneak in, sometimes quietly (a whisper of clove behind a tomato), sometimes as a burst (a spoonful of sambal that steals your breath). That’s what makes it exciting: the tension, the surprise, the sense that East meets West not as novelty, but as inevitable, intimate dialect.