Best Hotel Restaurants in San Francisco

A team of Oyster reporters spent weeks exploring 59 top hotels in San Francisco. We slept in the beds, ate in the restaurants, tested the service, and scoped out the neighborhoods, all with an eye toward selecting the most distinguished properties. Here's a list of our favorite hotel restaurants around the city.

Michael Mina

• Hotel: The Westin St. Francis
• Price: $210/night
• Pearls: Rating: 4.0 Pearls
• Location: Union Square, San Francisco

Its grand, neoclassical dining room is unlike any other, but it's the bold, New American flavor combinations that earned celebrity chef Michael Mina's namesake restaurant a Michelin star. Each dish on the $105 prix fixe menu is served as three distinct small plates: Wolfe Ranch quail and corn, for example, comes served pan-seared with polenta; as confit leg with sweet corn veloute; and with foie gras, black winter truffle, and corn bread crumble. The small plates on the $135 seasonal tasting menu are each paired with a different wine, like crispy skin striped bass with McKinlay pinot noir. But, if you're not prepared to pay three figures for your meal, come early for the cheaper three-course pre-theater menu ($55), or you can just sit in the lounge area and order a la carte.

Ame

• Hotel: The St. Regis San Francisco
• Price: $501/night
• Pearls: Rating: 5.0 Pearls
• Location: SoMa/Financial District, San Francisco

Ame's innovative mixture of Californian ingredients with Japanese and New American cooking techniques has earned the restaurant Michelin stars in both 2008 and 2009 as well as critical acclaim in publications like the San Francisco Chronicle. Entrees such as grilled dry-aged New York strip steak with crispy sweetbreads or spaghettini with a one pound of Maine lobster range from $30 to $40, and the five course tasting menu is $85.

Luce

• Hotel: InterContinental - San Francisco
• Price: $191/night
• Pearls: Rating: 4.5 Pearls
• Location: SoMa/Financial District, San Francisco

Luce won a Michelin star in October 2009 for Chef Dominique Crenn's New American cuisine. House specialties include braised short ribs with haricot verts, roasted cipollini, and horseradish and roasted local organic chicken with slow-cooked egg, corn, and bacon bread salad. In 2009, the Versailles-born chef was invited to participate in the Food Network series The Next Iron Chef. Luce serves dinner nightly plus breakfast and lunch during the week; and Tuesdays through Saturdays, it offers a superb eight-course seasonal tasting menu for $85.

Dining Room

• Hotel: The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco
• Price: $384/night
• Pearls: Rating: 4.5 Pearls
• Location: Nob Hill, San Francisco

The Dining Room's Japanese-influenced French cuisine is not only some of the best hotel cuisine in San Francisco, it's some of the best in the state: It was one of only four hotel restaurants in California to earn five stars from Exxon Mobil guide in 2010. There are only two menu options -- a three course prix fixe a la carte menu ($74) or nine course tasting menu ($125), but you get what you pay for. Entrees include Pozzi Farm lamb with pepato cheese, squash blossoms, tapenade, pesto and artichoke puree; for dessert: chocolate manjari caramel cake with caramel ice cream, or, on occasion, a decadent tray of homemade candy.

Big 4

• Hotel: The Huntington Hotel
• Price: $201/night
• Pearls: Rating: 4.5 Pearls
• Location: Nob Hill, San Francisco

Named for the four tycoons who built the Central Pacific Railroad (C.P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker), the Big 4 Restaurant is a high-class affair, replete with vested servers who quietly appear when a wine glass needs to be refilled. Green leather booths, dim lighting, dark wood, and railroad memorabilia on the walls give the impression of a tavern, but this is a fine-dining institution helmed by chef Gloria Ciccarone-Nehls, known for her specialty in exotic wild game (during Wild Game Week at the restaurant, she makes wild paella of crispy frog legs and rabbit-rattlesnake sausage). Contemporary American entrees such as Dungeness crab cakes and prawns with angel-hair pasta range from $16 to $44.

Campton Place

• Hotel: Campton Place Taj Hotel
• Price: $409/night
• Pearls: Rating: 4.5 Pearls
• Location: Union Square, San Francisco

At Campton Place you'll find fine dining with all its trappings: white tablecloths and leather booths, poised servers in suits, and stylish details like this beautiful blown glass bouquet light fixture. More importantly, you'll find a superb Californian-Mediterranean menu and one of the best wine cellars in the city, stocked with 1,500 labels carefully selected by Master Sommelier Richard Dean, one of only 150 people in the world to actively hold that title. The meal begins with an amuse-bouche, like green apple and arugula foam, and continues with inventive fare like slow-roasted pork belly topped with cuttlefish and deep-fried okra. Main courses range from around $23 to $45, and the five-course tasting menu is $95.

O Izakaya

• Hotel: Hotel Kabuki
• Price: $145/night
• Pearls: Rating: 3.0 Pearls
• Location: Nob Hill, San Francisco

O Izakaya's Japanese-influenced small plates, such as Berkshire pork belly braised with house-made kimchee and maitake mushrooms ($14), win raves from the San Francisco Chronicle and area locals, who come in for fancy cocktails like the Hibiscus Margarita ($10) and Oolong Iced Tea ($9) and extensive sake list. It might be styled like a Japanese sports bar -- sleek booths, red lanterns, TVs on the walls, and pop art of faces of baseball players -- but the atmosphere is quietly casual, not rowdy.