As 2024 draws to a close, the Eater Awards are a chance to reflect on the year’s restaurant and bar openings and celebrate the food and beverage scene. Eater SF has spent the last few months looking back at the meals we enjoyed most, the cocktails we lingered over, and the journey to finding that just-perfect croissant.

This year, Eater SF awards the restaurants and bars that stood out most in a crowded field of great dishes and drinks. Visit a restaurant that evokes feelings of delight and feels transportive to another place and time in one bite, or travel to a bakery that confirms there are still corners of the Bay to be discovered. Luxuriate in thoughtful drinks, whether from an enthusiastic bartender who brings high technique and curiosity to the glass, or a beautifully composed, simple four-ingredient cocktail that shows poise in constraints. Or cozy up in a restaurant that exudes a warmth that radiates beyond its fireplace and fairytale cottage interior. Here now are SF’s 2024 Eater Award winners.

Four Kings: Restaurant of the Year

After just a year of pop-ups in 2023, Four Kings energetically burst onto the San Francisco restaurant scene in March and hasn’t slowed since. The restaurant’s mix of nostalgia for the four kings of 1990s Cantopop and for cha chaan teng, the Hong Kong-style cafes chefs Mike Long and Franky Ho frequented in their youth, paired with thoughtful cooking touches has proved entrancing. It’s a step beyond authenticity and all the stickiness that word evokes. Instead, it’s a restaurant true to these four kings — Long, Ho, and their respective partners Lucy Li and Millie Boonkokua — as a Cantonese restaurant verging into izakaya territory in its California home of San Francisco, and all the culinary twists and turns that conjures.

Pick out XO sauce-laden escargot from the shell; slurp mala-spiced mapo spaghetti; and eat clay pot rice highlighting family recipes of Chinese sausage and bacon, which the team makes themselves. Order the fish-fragrant eggplant and watch as shavings of katsuobushi dance on top, or try steak chow fun done right and kissed by wok hei, or the breath of the wok. It hits for many in the Asian diaspora, but even if it may not be the equivalent to your specific childhood nostalgia, it’s difficult not to get swept up in it all the same. Four Kings’s siren call of good food and hospitality rings through Chinatown and the larger Bay Area at hand for anyone listening closely.

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Stoa: Best New Bar

The quiet confidence that Lower Haight bar Stoa exudes speaks volumes. Four San Francisco hospitality vets — Allyson Jossel, Yanni Kehagiaras, Gonzalo Guzmán, and chef Joji Sumi — thoughtfully infuse the bar’s drinks and food with style and poise, all with a neighborhood feel.

The drinks skew beautifully simple and achieve multitudes. Stoa is your bartender’s favorite bar, where one can study, learn, drink, and ponder how three or four just-right ingredients can sometimes achieve something greater than the sum of its parts. Your drinking adventure starts with one of three categories: “Low Octane, Yet Complex,” “Stern, but Fair,” and “Lean & Mean.” Wherever you go from there, expect composed drinks such as the Gentleman. A balanced mix of tequila, Bonal, and gentian, it’s just one testimonial to how Kehagiaras approaches drinks . Tack on the flavors of Sumi’s food that thumbs its nose at traditional bar menus and goes for bold flavor combinations; think Korean rice cakes with wild mushrooms and Savoy cabbage wrapped in seaweed, or rice porridge with braised chicken, vegetables, an egg, and peanut chile crisp. It’s a solid bar for those paying attention.

Blooms End: Best New Bakery

Drive through the ochre-hued hills and eucalyptus tree groves, past the bikers on their weekend rides, and then turn from the main road to a dirt lot that leads to, of all things, a vintage camper filled with whimsical pastries. Welcome to the pastry playground of Blooms End , the treasure at the end of the rainbow (Petaluma, actually) that rewards drivers with promises of ricotta-filled fontina hot honey morning buns, delicata squash croissant tarts, and other seasonal pastries. It’s a destination bakery, with laminated sweet and savory croissants and cake slices sold against the backdrop of mellow notes emanating from a throwback cassette player.

Fans who know Denham from her pop-up days — as well as stints as pastry chef at Outerlands and later Neighbor Bakehouse — are already familiar with the coffee-cardamom monkey bread, but the bakery’s seasonal offerings ensure Blooms End always feels fresh. Feast on roasted rhubarb twists in the spring; tomato pie in the summer; and sweet potato marshmallow moons in the fall for a taste of what makes the Bay Area special. Follow Denham on Instagram , and her weekly menu notes show the love and care (and playfulness!) that keeps us driving those twisty, windy paths to get to those pastries at Blooms End.

Restaurant Where We Want to Be Regulars: Tanzie’s

The chill, cozy, fireplace vibes of Tanzie’s are matched with an equally comforting breakfast menu made to satisfy Thailand transplants and anyone who loves a proper morning meal. Owners and partners Krissana “Tanz” Tussanaprasit and Jezreel “Jae” Rojas met while working at Kin Khao in San Francisco and together launched Tanzie’s a few years later in Berkeley. Serving Chiang Mai breakfast food, the menu is anchored by the “lava eggs” — soft scrambled eggs given the flourish of a rose-like twist and laid over scoops of rice, accompanied by a choice of protein, such as nam prik ong, ground pork in a curry paste, or flavorful house-made sausage punctuated by pops of brightness from lemongrass. It feels like basking in Thailand’s best, casual breakfasts, but in our Bay Area backyard.

The concept made fast fans of its Berkeley neighbors and beyond, lured in by the premise of Thai breakfast made with care. And if this isn’t already alluring enough, Tanzie’s only stands to get better with time: The team is gearing up to add dinner to their offerings, which sounds promising already.

Izler Thomas: Bartender of the Year

Izler Thomas loves to give his drinks a sense of time and place . Moving across the ocean from India to settle into San Francisco’s orbit as a new-to-the-area bartender is no easy feat, but Thomas has made the adjustment with aplomb. He’s had a hand in the drink menu at Razzberry Rhinoceros in Mumbai’s Juhu neighborhood, followed by Rooh in that same city. He then moved to the States and led the bar at Pippal in Emeryville, before joining forces with the Sarkar brothers and leading the drinks menu at Michelin-listed Tiya in the Marina.

Thomas, 25, found his way into the cocktail scene at a young age, and now he crafts drinks that speak to him and his team, as well as to the city they serve. In his explorations of San Francisco, he’s taken those impressions and distilled the flavors of distinct neighborhoods into cocktails. The team then shakes up (or stirs) a viewpoint of the city fit for a glass. The Marina cocktail, for example, tinkers with the notion of a mango lassi and flips it by clarifying rum and mango with coconut yogurt. Borrowing techniques from mentors and chefs, Thomas speaks his own language with drinks and San Francisco gets to converse with that world with each glass.