The 12 Best Places to Eat in San Mateo

A kaiseki tasting counter in a San Mateo strip mall, which is either a great joke or a great lesson in not reading the room by its cover. Chef Katsuhiro Yamasaki runs the kitchen solo, his wife runs the dining room, and together they turn out a monthly changing menu that marries classical Japanese technique with California produce. The place holds a Michelin star, and the food makes that feel like a matter of fact.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Eight seats and a cypress bar is the whole room, and the quiet that settles over it mid-meal is the kind that happens when people are paying close attention. This San Mateo omakase counter serves Edomae sushi built on fish flown in from Toyosu, with curing and aging doing quiet work before a single piece of nigiri lands in front of you. Chef Akira Yoshizumi honed the style across Japan and New York, and the precision shows.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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The bar seats face a glass-walled noodle room where someone is forever converting spools of dough into the springy, house-made strands in your bowl. Kajiken is a Japanese soba shop specializing in aburasoba, a brothless style where oils and sauces do the heavy lifting instead. The concentrated flavor catches you off guard the first time. A table caddy of vinegar, hot sauce, and powdered nori lets you keep adjusting until it's exactly right. Expect a line at peak hours.

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A charcuterie-aging room visible from the dining room sets the tone at this Venetian Italian restaurant in downtown San Mateo. The chef brings his native Veneto to the menu, running from salumi boards through wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas to house-made pastas, and the kitchen stays open late enough to feel almost radical for the suburbs. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the tech crowd has noticed.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Chandeliers, original artwork, and dining rooms that somehow feel both old-school and alive with color set the scene at this San Mateo prix-fixe spot. Three- and five-course tasting menus rotate with the seasons, pulling from influences that don't settle on one continent for long. The crowd tends toward date nights and birthday dinners, dressed for the occasion and happy about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Loaves lined up on shelves like a carb library, pastries under glass, and a window straight into the breadmaking operation: Backhaus is a downtown San Mateo bakery and coffee shop that takes laminated dough seriously. The croissants lean toward the ornate, one arrives garnished with pistachios and raspberry as a preview of what's inside. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries and best coffee.

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Tsukemen is the format here: chilled house-made noodles served separately from a thick, concentrated broth so gelatinous it coats every strand on contact. The broth, built from chicken, pork, dried anchovies, and bonito, is intense enough that you can ask for dashi to thin it for sipping once the noodles are gone. This San Mateo shop is the first U.S. location of an old-school Tokyo institution credited with popularizing the style.

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The sashimi-grade fish counter is the reason most people make the drive to this Japanese grocery and prepared-foods shop in San Mateo. Pick up hand-rolled onigirazu stuffed with Spam and egg, seaweed salad by the pound, or one of around twenty bento options at lunch. Pre-cut sashimi gets discounted toward closing, which the regulars have long figured out.

1. San Francisco Chronicle Best Japanese restaurants in the Bay Area

A sushi spot in San Mateo where the non-sushi menu quietly steals the show. Regulars fill the seats and rarely need to look at a menu, and the chef keeps them coming back with rice dishes worth the trip on their own: hitsumamushi arrives in a hot stone vessel, the grains scorched and crackly, folded with salmon and yellowtail and finished with a kelp and green tea broth. Five variations of chirashi round things out, and lunch brings a chicken curry worth knowing about.

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