Our food critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez are always eating with our list of the Top 100 best restaurants in the Bay Area in mind. But research mode gets more urgent as we approach the end of the year, and now, we’re starting to have serious debates about what deserves a slot in the 2026 edition.
What won’t ever go unchanged with Top 100 is a commitment to highlighting the most essential — and delicious — restaurants in the region. But there are parameters that could reasonably shift. We didn’t include popups this year because they can be difficult to pin down — but maybe we should reconsider? What about food trucks? One, Tacos Mama Cuca, made it in 2025 but then lost its space; it remains temporarily closed. What about places with extremely limited hours? Does the Cultured Pickle Shop’s weekend-only lunch service make it a restaurant? We decided yes, but you tell us!
One area of much internal discussion is restaurants that are really, really, really hard to get into. Take Sun Moon Studio. It debuted at No. 4 after less than a year in business for its awe-inspiring tasting menu — so awe-inspiring, in fact, that the New York Times later named it one of the 50 best restaurants in the country, and Bon Appétit deemed it one of the 20 top new restaurants nationwide. The Oakland restaurant is notoriously tiny, with just 12 seats, and now getting a reservation has felt like unboxing a mint-green Labubu…