Wine, Dine & Party

Easter brunch at San Francisco's top hotels is often elaborate, sumptuous and buffet style. Added touches typically include special treats and activities for children, the Easter Bunny and live music.

If you’re not going to someone’s home for Passover, choose among the many communal Passover Seders in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most are on the first or second night of Passover, and all are welcome.

San Francisco and Northern California are well represented in the pool of chef, restaurant and cookbook finalists for the 2012 James Beard Foundation Awards. The culinary world's Oscars will be awarded in May.

Valentine's Day in San Francisco inspires parties, fundraisers, embarrassing public confessions, artwork, games, zoology lessons, cruises and of course, romantic dinners. Here's a list of some of them, starting with Valentine's parties and events, then cruises, and then dining options. Plan ahead, because the Valentine's Day celebrating begins...

The annual Edwardian Ball is unlike any other parties in San Francisco, a cabaret/circus/burlesque-revue/costume-party with an edge of black humor.

The delicious food products and dining options of San Francisco and the Bay Area are highlighted every January by food shows and restaurant-promotional programs.

A guide to 2012 New Year's Eve parties, performances, concerts and other entertainment in San Francisco, including a few events that are kid-friendly.

Where to find Halloween horror, parties and other 2011 Halloween events for adults in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Street Food Festival assembles top San Francisco restaurants, food trucks, and talented, no-name cooks and bakers to serve their specialty dishes in the Mission. You get to judge how the barebones food carts stack up against the white-tablecloth restaurants.

Top San Francisco chefs create surprising, innovative desserts for the annual SF Chefs food festival's Sugar & Spice party. The party is a must for anyone who loves desserts.

Top San Francisco restaurants present wine and food tastings, classes and demonstrations to the public during the annual SF Chefs food festival.

For some of the best Japanese food in San Francisco and the Bay Area, go to Japanese Buddhist temples during the summer. That's Obon season, when temple members honor their ancestors and host celebrations that include traditional dancing, bazaars and lots of home-made, reasonably priced Japanese dishes.

Food, wine, music and entertainment are free-flowing in August in the San Francisco Bay Area, mostly outdoors. Outside Lands and the Street Food Festival are just a couple of the fun events on the calendar.

San Francisco isn t vanilla, and thank goodness neither is its ice cream. Here, artisanal food is considered practically a birthright, so Baskin...

Smitten Ice Cream uses liquid nitrogen and molecular gastronomy to churn out possibly the creamiest ice cream in San Francisco, in popular and startling flavors.

Besides the popular and colorful SF Pride street festival and parade on the last weekend in June, San Francisco hosts concerts, dance parties and many other LGBT pride activities that weekend and throughout the month. Here are some of the best.

Bay to Breakers is not just a San Francisco race--it's a phenomenon of parties and celebrations before and after the run.

For Mother's Day, restaurants, hotels and cruise companies are happy to do the cooking, especially for brunch and dinner. Many also present mom with free Champagne, a photo or flowers. Check these options for brunch and other Mother's Day activities.

Food Shows & Restaurant Specials

At national and international food events, you realize how lucky the Bay Area is. It's home to all sorts of delicious ingredients and food.

The Mission's restaurant revolution has brought cuisines from around the world to the burrito bastion.

For those mornings you don't have to eat and run, SF offers many tasty places to break your fast.

In such a gourmet capital as SF, everyone has his or her favorite fine dining spots. Here are ours.

With a lounge vibe and a menu of small plates, a wine bar is the perfect place to relax and sample the best grapes from nearby Napa, Sonoma and beyond.

Live music and dancing after dark.

Red and White, a Glen Park neighborhood wine bar, serves 13 wines, most of them Californian, plus chic grilled cheese sandwiches, charcuterie and to-die-for cheese puffs to a casual yuppie crowd.

Shanghai, a special exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, shows Shanghai’s evolution over the past 160 years from a small port to the sophisticated, frenetic-paced metropolis that it is today. On display are 130 ink and oil paintings, prints, Shanghai deco dresses and pieces of furniture, movie clips, revolutionary posters and installations.

Thanks to a slew of festivals, fairs and outdoor events in San Francisco in September, we can pretend summer hasn't ended.

<p>Food-obsessed San Francisco has been at the front of the recent food cart/food truck revolution. The Bay Area boasts about 150 roaming vendors of nouveau street food, an annual street food festival and <a href=http://offthegridsf.com/>Off the Grid</a>, weekly convergences of mobile food carts and trucks dishing out everything from Asian tacos to salted caramel cupcakes.</p>

<p>Here are some of the best of San Francisco’s active food truck/food cart fleet, with Twitter handles so you can track their whereabouts. Excluded are trucks run by restaurants or stores (e.g., Chez Spencer, Kara’s Cupcakes). </p> 

 

Food-obsessed San Francisco has fallen for mobile food--ready-to-eat edibles sold from roving food carts and food trucks. The old-time hot dog carts and taco trucks have been joined by trained and untrained cooks and bakers selling multi-ethnic fusion dishes, nouveau fast food and new twists on finger food. Which food trucks or carts are your favorites?

San Francisco is dotted with specialty shops scooping up fresh, smooth, house-made ice cream in classic, exotic, innovative and sometimes baffling, odd flavors. In this city of foodies, everyone has an opinion about which ice cream is the best.