Food in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the world’s great culinary cities, a virtual petri dish of gastronomic innovation. Most people believe the fusion food craze began in the 1990s, but here in San Francisco the interplay of cultures and culinary traditions dates as far back as the 1700s. That’s when Spanish settlers in the area (then known as Yerba Buena) began partying and swapping recipes with the Yelamu, a peaceful tribal group of the Ohlone Indians. These raucous affairs gave rise to many original dishes, several new drinking games, and the now ubiquitous “fist bump”. It is said that the idea for serving chowder in a bread bowl was born during one of these shindigs, when a young, drunken Spaniard shirked his dishwashing duties leaving the revelers without vessels for their soup. To this day, innovation in the face of mind-crippling intoxication remains at the heart of what makes San Francisco cuisine second-to-none.