This is the most fun restaurant on our Top 100 list
The Chinatown restaurant remains arguably San Francisco's hottest restaurant, even a year after opening. Reservations open at midnight and book three weeks out. Diners are still quoted a two-hour wait on Saturday nights. And they wait, peering in at diners perched at the narrow wooden counter in front of the bustling open kitchen, cheersing Taiwanese beers while Cantonese pop music plays. Tables overflow with plates of XO escargot, mapo spaghetti and crispy whole squab.
When San Francisco Chronicle critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez came up with their list of the Bay Area's Top 100 restaurants, they immediately agreed on which one was the most fun: No. 2, Four Kings.
'Four Kings is the type of place where strangers end up swapping menu recommendations and eventually doing shots of shochu together,' Fegan said.
The Chinatown restaurant's name both pays homage to Cantonese pop band Four Heavenly Kings, and the four owners, who are friends and former coworkers. Their first restaurant was inspired by a group trip to Honolulu, where they fell in love with a similarly unserious but delicious izakaya-style restaurant. Chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long and their respective partners, Millie Boonkokua and Lucy Li, bring experience from some of San Francisco's top restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Chinese favorite Mister Jiu's and the genre-defying Liholiho Yacht Club, both also Top 100 restaurants. Eating here feels like eating at a dinner party in their apartment; the dining room is decorated with polaroid pictures, empty alcohol bottles and vinyl records from the owners' personal collections.
Four Kings has drawn nearly every national food accolade. In its first year, it was named one of Bon Appetit's best new restaurants, restaurant of the year by both Esquire and Eater and placed on The New York Times' best restaurants list. It's also up for this year's best new restaurant award from the James Beard Foundation.
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