Gourmet products local specialties and wines San Francisco

Close your eyes, you're in France for a moment. Here is chocolate lightning, olives and croissants with almonds, everything freshly made before you. Excellent cakes and sandwiches for a snack, as at home.

You can't miss this extravagant bakery on the main street of Castro. Indeed, the cookies are very good but we will remember especially their extravagant shapes. Obviously, we prefer the ones in the shape of penises, each one bigger than the other, that everyone likes to put in his mouth while laughing heartily. Hip-hop music, photos posted on the walls representing the gay community, the atmosphere remains good-natured: a funny stop not to be missed during your visit in the neighborhood!

This delicatessen is full of Japanese products, with a strong emphasis on alcoholic beverages, from sake to beer, with a small detour to Europe via a selection of some good wines. There are also snacks from the land of the Rising Sun, and fresh products and dishes to enjoy on the spot or to take away. Soups, pastries and sandwiches are simple and tasty. And to spoil nothing, the atmosphere is nice: a kind of design grocery store, sober and trendy. A good address, to be shared between lovers of the country of the Rising Sun.

This is the story of a clarinet player who fell in love with coffee and decided one day to change his life. Blue Bottle Coffee Company, a small company with integrity, has since been buying its organic coffee beans from around the world and roasting them in the San Francisco area. Two stands at the Ferry Building Market, easy to spot in the line of customers! And it's been so successful that it's now present in New York, Chicago, Washington and even across the Pacific in Tokyo, Honk Kong and Seoul. Not to be missed if you like coffee!

In 1906, Suyeichi Okamura opened Benkyodo, one of the first shops in Japantown. With the Second World War, the Japanese of San Francisco were deported to detention centers: the store had to close. It reopened in 1951, still run by the Okamura family. This tiny diner has kept the warm atmosphere that reigned there in the 1950s: the old-timers come to drink coffee and chat. But it is especially for the enchanting mochi (filled sweet rice balls) that people come here.

In 1997, after years in the test kitchen, Michael founded Recchiuti Confections in partnership with his wife, Jacky. They arrange their delicate Recchiuti filled chocolate squares like little jewels in a glass case. Their famous Caramel à la fleur de sel, with a whisky aftertaste, is the most requested flavor... The Recchiuti team proudly asserts that they always source local herbs, such as lavender and lemon verbena, from California farmers' markets and blend them into their chocolates. A real treat!

California's most famous confectioner. The company moved from Canada to Los Angeles in 1921, to San Francisco in 1936. Four stores in San Francisco where you can compose your own box of sweets. A few extra calories for you or/and a few small gourmet gifts to bring back... Memories every time! For the record, in 1994 a driver delivering a chocolate order fell asleep while his truck was hooked up to one of the vats and was pumping, so that El Camino Real and Spruce Avenue next door were flooded with chocolate!

A showcase to make the most greedy among us green with envy. We stop there at any time of the day to devour pastries made with a rare finesse. You can even find kouign-amann, as well as croissants, pastramis, onion-tomato-bacon burratas, lychee and raspberry jam or café au lait... There are also excellent sandwiches made from homemade bread of course. Franciscans love them and it is easy to understand why. Go there without waiting, you will enjoy it!

A must in the heart of Chinatown: this Chinese pastry shop is an institution on the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, Grant Avenue. People come to line up in front of its pagoda-shaped shelter to taste the delicate and delicious specialties that will delight sweet tooths in search of oriental gustatory discoveries. Like an egg mooncake with delicious lotus seed paste. The Chinese family who run it also sell a few bags of fortune cookies (if you haven't had time to go to the factory).