Shuggie’s front dining room. Photo by Virginia Miller. Truthfully, San Francisco never stopped being fun, but these four restaurants are next-level. Two are brand new, one is recently remodeled and reborn, the other opened January 2025. All are whimsical, even funky, sometimes brazenly colorful and daringly flavorful. Chicken Fried Palace. Photo by Virginia Miller. If Waffle House Were Gourmet: Chicken… Read more →
Multiple road trips through the South for 17 years, studying BBQ styles across states and regions, does, indeed, make me a barbecue “snob.” I have long known it’s nearly impossible to find the “best of the best” outside of the South. So thank God for Matt Horn, who makes the best barbecue I’ve had in the entire West at Oakland’s Horn Barbecue.
I wrote about his fried chicken spot, Kowbird, after it opened early 2022. Horn and team just opened Matty’s Old Fashioned on July 20, 2023, in Old Oakland as his tribute to the classic American diner, but reinvented and refined. Think burgers and McDonald’s-esque fish sandwiches in a brick-walled, blue-and-gold, diamond wall-papered space… Read more →